The Nature Conservancy - NNY Spring/Summer 2007: C&W News

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The Central & Western Chapter
The Central and Western New York Chapter of The Nature Conservancy covers 29 counties, nearly half the state of New York, and owns or manages nearly 25,000 acres.

After hurricane Stan, the Conservancy realized the dredging of the channels to speed the release of water from populated areas had a bigger environmental impact than previously thought. Above, the river channel before flooding. Click for larger image.

Above, the river channel after flooding. Click for larger image.

Hurricane in Mexico Yields Valuable Lessons in Conservation

For the last eight years, the Central & Western New York Chapter has provided critical funding and technical assistance to a sister site in Chiapas, Mexico. Known as the Chiapas Coastal watersheds, the site extends from the high peaks and cloud forests of the Sierra Madre down to an extensive wetland complex and lagoon system of the Pacific. Two United Nations-designated biosphere reserves safeguard more than 600,000 acres of critical habitat here.

When staff and trustees first visited the site in 1999, planting trees along riparian corridors in the landscape appeared to be the right thing to do. Just one year earlier, the area had been hit by torrential rains that produced mudslides in the highlands and massive flooding along the coast. Much of the riverbank vegetation was swept away during the rains, leaving scoured, boulderstrewn valleys.

The Conservancy launched an effort to replant riverbank vegetation with the help of local native plant nurseries. The result was a lush riverbank canopy in many areas. But in October 2005, Hurricane Stan devastated southern Chiapas and northern Guatemala, triggering another round of devastating mudslides and floods.

In 2006, Darran Crabtree, the Chapter’s Director of Conservation Science at French Creek, visited the coastal watersheds and found the landscape again radically transformed. “We have now begun to rethink the effects of large-scale disturbances and how some of our on-the-ground efforts may have been mismatched,” he says.

More important than the reforestation is the municipality’s response to the flooding. Historically, water rushed off the mountainsides, fanning out across relatively flat, heavily forested land before entering a series of coastal lagoons. Today, the local population lives and works in the flatlands near the rivers. Periodically, these areas flood, causing loss of life and property. In response, “people have channeled the rivers to move water quickly out of populated areas. More than the quality of the riparian zone, we believe this channeling has a much greater impact on the downstream health of the mangrove lagoon system of the biosphere reserves,” says Crabtree.

The Nature Conservancy, through its Mexican partner Pronatura, has hired watershed coordinators to help change the human management of the rivers around the municipalities. Riverbank vegetation is still important in reducing sediment runoff and to provide habitat for creatures living in the ecosystem, but its role in tempering the effects of large disturbances may be more limited than previously thought.

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