For 74 of El Ocote s 90 listed species of mammals among them monkeys, coatis and opposums tree branches are an essential habitat, an obvious dilemma in a land suddenly short on trees. If there might be one handhold of optimism for the future of the El Ocote forest, it perhaps lies in its ancient past. By the time Cort s marched ashore 500 years ago, there were already nearly 54 million people living in the New World, calculates geographer William Denevan, more than 17 million of them in Mexico. Charcoal excavated from the tropical soils suggests these were millions of people regularly wielding tools of fire. Yet for some the past offers small comfort.
People come in and start farming in places that have been burned down.
We can no longer rely on an ecological time scale. We have to step in. El Ni o is a periodic warming of Pacific waters, arising on average every three to 10 years. The warming derails trade winds, inserting dramatic kinks in the world s weather. In the New World tropics, the typical effect is severe drought, of the kind that cured the woods that burned in 1998.