The Mendezes are now taking visitors into their home as part of an ecotourism program launched by Defensores. Delicious gingerbread and sweet, honeyed peaches from their property are among the delights to enjoy at their table. But the bitter truth of the illegal fires, hunting and logging is the staple of conversation. Defensores is trying to meet the challenge of illegal fires with a Pilot Fire Management Program for the Sierra. Defensores' mission is to monitor the fires' effects on biodiversity, organize local people to form fire brigades and hire people to do fire prevention in inaccessible areas.
Rainforests are increasingly vulnerable to fire worldwide.
As trees are slashed and burned by peasant farmers desperate for land and clearcut by voracious timber companies, once-vast rainy ecosystems are reduced to dry fragments. This trend is leading to a drier climate worldwide and is also contributing to the greenhouse effect. In 1998, El Nino sparked drought and forest fires worldwide, with damage the size of small countries in Brazil and Indonesia. Shade-grown coffee has become the preferred agricultural alternative to corn, not the least because it provides excellent songbird habitat, and a small organic coffee cooperative is underway in the Sierra, launched by Defensores. But a coffee crop takes three years to become profitable, and by 1998, organic coffee programs had been underway for only two years in the Sierra.