My Adventure in Mangamanguilla Private Conservation Reserve
I had the privilege of visiting and working with the Mangamanguilla Private Conservation Area in Piura, Peru, on my 5-week collecting trip to Peru in March and April 2019. Mangamanguilla is a phenomenally beautiful place, with a remarkable grassroots conservation success story that I want to share with you.
The Adventure Begins
The first time I met Paolo Villegas, Peruvian botanist and conservationist extraordinaire, was when he picked me and my luggage and several crates of specimens up at my hotel in the town of Sullana, Peru, in early April 2019. We had never met in person before (thanks to Diego García for introducing us - I'm pretty sure Diego knows every biologist in Peru), but we had emailed back and forth for months to plan and get the permits in order for my botanical collection trip.
Paolo and I spent the next week together collecting palo santo (Bursera graveolens) all over the Piura region, even crossing over the Andes mountains into Cajamarca to reach the Marañón Valley dry forests. Despite my limited Spanish and his limited English (we kind of spoke Spanglish and it worked?), we managed to become friends and share conservation ideas on our incredible adventure. Paolo is an extremely talented botanist - he knew nearly every plant we encountered on our travels - and also a dedicated Peruvian conservationist.
Paolo has spent the last few years helping the people of Mangamanguilla, a rural village in the Piura region of Peru, work to conserve their dry forest and develop sustainable sources of income for their village. The time I spent collecting in the Mangamanguilla Private Conservation Reserve remains the most unforgettable of our many adventures driving around NW Peru, partly from my travels to get there (see below) but mostly because of Mangamanguilla's remarkable grassroots conservation success story.
Traveling to Mangamanguilla
Paolo arranged for me to stay in the village of Mangamanguilla (spelled Mangomanguía in google maps) with the President of the Mangamanga Agrarian Association, Martín Cruz and his family, and collect palo santo in their private reserve.
To get to Mangamanguilla in the rainy season you have to drive to the town of Malacasi (just south of Mangomanguia on the map below) and then cross two rivers (you can see those on the map) to reach the village and private conservation area.
And when I say you have to cross two rivers, I mean you have to cross two rivers sitting on a rubber inner tube with a wooden seat attached. Oh you have a laptop and a cell phone? Better pray to the palo santo gods that your bag doesn't fall off your lap (although my electronics were in a dry bag)! My biggest regret of my trip to Peru is that I didn't get pictures of me crossing the river on the tube. Pictures of some of the people from Mangamanguilla making the trip across the river on a tube will just have to suffice (although I am sure I had a different expression on my face!).
Tour of the Town
I was pretty nervous about my stay in Mangamanguilla, as Paolo could not stay over night with me there and I had never met Martín and his family (and have I mentioned I don't really speak Spanish?). I honestly had no idea what to expect as I had never stayed in a rural Peruvian village, but imagined I probably wouldn't have any running water or electricity (I was right about the water, but they did have electricity!).
Martín's family welcomed me into their home so warmly that I felt immediately at ease and able to embrace the adventure of staying in their village. His daughter scooped me up right away and took me on a tour of the village (some pictures below) and spent hours talking to me that night, patiently translating the meaning of my broken Spanish phrases. His wife cooked a fantastic dinner (arroz con pollo of course!), all over an open fire in their outdoor courtyard, with no running water available.
Collecting Palo Santo in Mangamanguilla
I stayed over night in Martín's house (they kindly gave up one of their rooms for me!).
The next morning, Martín and his friend and I set out bright and early to climb the hills of the Mangamanguilla Private Conservation Reserve and collect palo santo.
It was about 100 degrees with 80% humidity, and I quickly realized that although Martín and his friend were in their 60s they were in the physical condition of 30-year-old triathletes. Let's just say I am proud of myself for (sort of) keeping up and only having to ask for a break once!
As we climbed up from the lowland dry forest (dominated by Prosopis sp.), I started to see big palo santo trees everywhere! I had already collected palo santo around the general area (Piura region) for several days, and I had yet to see a forest like this one. In other areas of Piura, palo santo is a rare element in the forest because trees are cut to make fruit packing boxes (see my lab note about this) - we often had to drive around for hours just to find a small population. But since the Mangamanguilla community has protected their forest from cutting (see the end of this post for Mangamanguilla's history), palo santo remains a dominant tree species in the dry forest here.
I learned from Martín that they recognize three different types of palo santo trees, distinguished by the color of the inner bark layer: amarillo, negro, and blanco types (negro and blanco types pictured below; I didn't get a photo of the amarillo type). I collected samples for later DNA analysis from several of each type. I am intrigued about whether I might find a genetic difference between the three types.
I collected leaves from 15 different palo santo trees spread out across a portion of the conservation area to extract DNA back in my lab at George Mason, and material to make herbarium specimens (for preservation in a museum in perpetuity). I was excited to see so many trees in fruit (although the fruits were unripe) because herbarium specimens with fruiting and/or flowering material are vastly preferable to sterile specimens. Sterile specimens can make it hard for future scientists to confirm the identity of the plant.
A Short History of Mangamanguilla
In 2016, SERNANP (Peru's environmental agency) designated the Área Conservación Privada Mangamanguilla as a private reserve, legally protecting 1,738 hectares of critically endangered dry forest habitat. Mangamanguilla's story starts long before 2016, though. For decades the people of Mangamanguilla have protected their village's tropical dry forest against substantial pressure to deforest and selectively harvest palo santo and its other valuable timber species.
In 1982, the residents of Mangamanguilla formed the Mangamanga Agrarian Association of Salitral, an association of peasant farmers. The association purchased their village's land and surrounding dry forest (about 2,000 hectares) from agricultural cooperatives that had been given land rights during the 1975 agrarian reform. As newly minted land owners, the villagers began exploiting their valuable forest resources, especially palo santo (Bursera graveolens) and hualtaco (Loxopterygium huasango) trees, for a much-needed source of income.
In 1990, just eight years after purchasing the land, the people of Mangamanguilla noticed that their forest resources had been significantly depleted. This is where their story takes an unexpected turn. Instead of continuing to deplete their forest resources, the Mangamanga Agrarian Association made a collective decision to conserve them. They stopped cutting down trees and obtained income strictly by grazing cattle in previously cleared lowland areas. This decision in 1990 by the people of Mangamanguilla catalyzed a chain of events that culminated in the 2016 formation of the official private conservation area, protecting 1,738 hectares of critically endangered tropical dry forest.
Sustainable Use of Forest Resources in Mangamanguilla
Forming the private conservation area was no simple task, and the residents of Mangamanguilla have sacrificed short-term sources of income to achieve long-term conservation success. However, their 26 years of hard-fought conservation successes are at risk due to extreme weather patterns becoming more common, likely from climate change. Mangamanguilla has been losing cultivated land due to flooding in the rainy season and, conversely, droughts have become more frequent, making earning an income from agriculture even more difficult.
In 2018, Martín Cruz, the president of the Mangamanga Agrarian Association, came to Paolo Villegas to ask for help developing a sustainable source of income for Mangamanguilla from their forest resources.
In 2019, Paolo successfully obtained legal permission for Mangamanga to sell products made from the wood of dead, fallen palo santo trees. Women in the community began making jewelry from the wood and are being trained to improve the products for sale on the international market. I bought some of their lovely bracelets and earrings and am giving them away as donation gifts (to the first 5 people that donate $100 or more). They are also working on creating other products from renewable natural resources, like essential oil extracted from palo santo fruits, and incense sticks made from the wood of palo santo trees.
Until I visited Mangamanguilla and hiked through their forests I found it kind of hard to believe that there would be enough dead, fallen wood to sustain a jewelry and incense stick market (they are waiting on their export permit for incense sticks so I was not able to get any for this campaign). Because the people of Mangamanguilla have protected their forests from illegal harvesting, palo santo is a dominant species and I saw many dead, fallen logs on the forest floor. Unlike the surrounding area in Piura where palo santo has been over harvested almost to the point of local extinction, the forest in Mangamanguilla is absolutely teeming with palo santo trees!
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