Hon­duras: El Pa­car nature and ad­ven­ture trail

The coastal re­gion of the Gulf of Fon­seca on Hon­dur­as' Pa­cific coast is par­tic­u­larly af­fected by il­legal log­ging in the man­grove forests - this is due to a con­tinu­ing strong de­mand for fish and ag­ri­cul­tural pro­duc­tion areas from in­dus­trial ex­port com­pan­ies. Two thirds of the former man­grove areas have been des­troyed over the past four dec­ades. And the neg­at­ive in­flu­ence of in­dus­trial shrimp farm­ing on nat­ural re­sources and on tra­di­tional fish­ing, which se­cures sub­sist­ence, is grow­ing.

Since 2017, the Gesell­schaft für Solid­ar­ität und Part­ner­schaft (Gespa e.V.) from Göt­tin­gen in co­oper­a­tion with the Hon­duran en­vir­on­mental or­gan­isa­tion Comité Pro De­fensa de la Fauna y Flora del Golfo de Fon­seca (CODDEFFAGOLF) has been im­ple­ment­ing a cli­mate pro­tec­tion pro­ject in the man­grove areas of the Gulf of Fon­seca, which aims to im­prove the eco­lo­gical situ­ation of the coast and sup­port the sus­tain­able use of nat­ural re­sources by fish­ing fam­il­ies.

Through com­munity re­for­est­a­tion meas­ures, the de­struc­tion of the man­grove forests is to be coun­ter­ac­ted and the pro­tect­ive func­tion of the man­groves in hur­ricane and flood situ­ations is to be main­tained. Meas­ures to pro­tect sea turtles and their nest­ing colon­ies will be trans­ferred to the com­pet­ence and re­spons­ib­il­ity of cit­izens' groups. At the same time, en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion and par­ti­cip­a­tion of young people in the pro­tec­tion of the man­grove forests is to be in­tens­i­fied.

An im­port­ant com­pon­ent of the pro­ject is the CIM (Centro de In­vest­iga­ción Mar­ina) mar­ine re­search centre, which is cur­rently be­ing com­pleted. CIM is loc­ated on the is­land of "El Pa­car", which is only five hec­tares in size, and is part of the Ar­chipelago Golfo de Fon­seca Na­tional Park (ap­prox. 4,000 hec­tares). It opens up a wide range of re­search op­por­tun­it­ies in re­la­tion to ter­restrial and mar­ine eco­sys­tems and so­cial sys­tems. The is­land is also play­ing an in­creas­ingly im­port­ant role in en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion and re­gional tour­ism. In this re­spect, the con­struc­tion of an ad­ven­ture and nature trail serves to pro­mote en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion in the Gulf of Fon­seca and to raise aware­ness of the activ­it­ies of nature con­ser­va­tion or­gan­isa­tions in Hon­duras.

The in­volve­ment of the pop­u­la­tion, edu­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions and other or­gan­isa­tions plays an im­port­ant role in the cur­rent cli­mate pro­tec­tion pro­ject. In a sur­vey the local pop­u­la­tion rated en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion and en­vir­on­mental ex­per­i­ence as very im­port­ant.

The in­stall­a­tion of ex­per­i­ence- and edu­ca­tion-ori­ented ele­ments as an eco­lo­gical nature trail with in­teg­rated play­ful com­pon­ents was quickly im­ple­men­ted. Today the planned build­ings con­trib­ute con­sid­er­ably to im­prov­ing the pub­lic per­cep­tion of the "Re­search Is­land El Pa­car" and, due to the re­sponse from pu­pils, stu­dents, na­tional tour­ism as­so­ci­ations, teach­ers, etc., already show the po­ten­tial to pro­mote eco­lo­gic­ally in­ter­ested tour­ism in the re­gion.

Con­cep­tion and im­ple­ment­a­tion of the nature trail

The route of the cir­cu­lar nature trail was defined and the them­atic sta­tions on the fauna and flora of the Gulf of Fon­seca (em­blem­atic mar­ine and ter­restrial spe­cies) and on en­vir­on­mental and nature con­ser­va­tion were de­signed in col­lab­or­a­tion with the pro­ject pro­moter, the na­tional uni­versity, the school board, the en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion ex­pert and crafts­men.

For the real­isa­tion of the in­stall­a­tions and ob­jects, a work­ing team was formed which was in­tens­ively trained and which is still re­spons­ible for the main­ten­ance of the in­stall­a­tions.

The en­vir­on­mental edu­ca­tion concept has been jointly de­veloped by the par­ti­cip­at­ing ex­perts. Ac­com­pa­ny­ing ma­ter­i­als were cre­ated or pro­cured and com­piled in an in­form­a­tion and know­ledge case for the teach­ing staff to use in­de­pend­ently.