18:00 End of visit Wednesday, September 30/2015 Time Activity Responsible Field Visit Trip to site, Jacales, Mascota Conserved Maple Forest Payment for Ecosystem Service and Community Engagement (Cloud Forest) CONAFOR State Office at Jalisco 14:00 Trip to Mascota 14:30 Lunch Break 16:00 Presentation "Protection of Biodiversity and Ecosystems of the Biological Corridor Ameca, Manantlan" designed to strengthen governance mechanisms and integrated management of territories in biological corridors. CONANP, Project Coordination 18:00 End of Visit 16:00 Fire Management (Including Visit to the National Center of Forest Fire Control) Alfredo Nolasco Morales, Manager of Forest Fires Protection 17:30 End of Meeting CONAFOR Thursday, October 1/2015 Time Activity Responsible 8:00- 14:00 Field Visit Trip to Predo El Atajo, Mascota Timber Forest Management Low Impact timber Extraction Reforestation Fire Management CONAFOR 14:30 Lunch Break 16:00 Drive Back to Guadalajara 18:00 End of Visit Friday, October 2/2015 Time Activity Responsible 13:00 Check out and transfer to air port CONAFOR 14:00 Arrival to airport and Check in 14:30 Lunch 17:00 Departure Flight 4. VISIT ENGAGEMENTS In this section, we provide a synopsis of the major engagements of the visit with a focus on the presentations and discussions, field/facility visits and on-site discussions. For convenience, a highlight of individual presentations is given followed by a summary of the general discussions
Q What are the criteria for selection of a PES site? Response: There are well-defined criteria which gives high priority to social and environmental values. Some of the criteria are: areas whose water resources are over exploited, flora and fauna in need of conservation, level of poverty etc... Q Which NTFPs do communities extract from the forest? Response: Mainly mushrooms, honey and coffee. DAY 4 Visit to Low-impact logging site Sustainable forestry in Mexico attempts to address the national wood demand (so as to reduce the pressure on the natural forest) and also improving the competitiveness of forest production systems in regional markets. The plan by CONAFOR is to increase production, modernize the industry, increase efficiency and provide technical support. The overarching government policy encourages wood production on community land with value-adding in community-based sawmills. Bigger timber companies in Mexico do not own land (as the maximum land that can be provided to these companies is 25,000ha). These companies either buy logs from community saw mills or use their own work force to extract timber from community owned plantations. CONAFOR provides technical support to private land owners and communities while the Ministry of Natural Resources play a regulatory role. In an attempt to promote the contribution of forestry in the economy, CONAFOR works towards strengthening community-based wood industries through technical support, capacity building and improving productivity. We visited a small (4500ha) wood production site where 10 land owners form an association. With a technical and financial support (60% of the cost is covered by government) from CONAFOR, the association is now using a cable technology for low-impact log extraction replacing tractors. Low-impact logging will reduce the impact on the site, improve safety, increase efficiency and productivity. The cable technology can carry and transport 1500kg of log and transports 110cubic meter log per day.