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THE CLOUD FOREST: A CRITICALLY ENDAGERED HABITAT

Tropical mountain cloud forests make up about 1% of all forests in the

Western Hemisphere but contain a disproportionately high number of unique

endemic species. These forests are the rarest and most endangered of

habitats and are the home for such surprising animals as the horned guan

Oreophasis derbianus, a turkey-sized bird with a strawberry-red hornon its forehead, found only in a small number of remote cloud forests in

Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico. One other often overlooked characteristic

of these forests is that they are the natural habitat of the wild relatives of

many crop species including the papaya, tomato, passion fruit, blackberry,

coffee, potatoes, beans, peppers, cocoa, and cucumbers. Cloud forests are

genetic reservoirs perhaps unrivaled by any other type of terrestrial

ecosystem while at the same time being the most endangered by human

encroachment. The three Cs of the apocalypse: cattle ranching,chainsaws, and cultivation to provide the countries of the with such desirable

crops as coffee, cardamom, ornamental plants, and boutique vegetables:

altogether this kind of economic development in the tropical countries of

America are bringing about the destruction of these most ancient cloud

enshrouded forests.

A thousand years ago most of the forests of Northern Mesoamerican

had been cleared to open up cropland and arboricultural plantations to

provide sustenance for the burgeoning Mayan population, thought to havenumbered as many as ten million. Thankfully, many cloud forests, located

on particularly inaccessible high mountain ridges, were spared. As wild and

lush as they look, botanists have revealed that the forests which surround the

great Mayan cities such as Tikal and El Mirador, which were abandoned

around the year 950 A.D., are in fact largely the result of human cultivation.

Not so with the cloud forests which are truly ancient and have been evolving

along pretty much undisturbed since the last ice age.

The experience of being in a cloud forest is of waking up in the most

fantastically lush emerald-green realm imaginable. Literally inside of acloudbank, the temperature is cool and there is the constant sound of water

dripping from the leaves. There is an incredible abundance of epiphytes:

orchids, bromeliads, and ferns cover every trunk and branch of the towering

oaks and liquidambars. Every rock is covered in moss. Up to a quarter of all

the plants in the cloud forest are epiphytes. These aerial species capture the

water they need directly from the mist and provide micro-habitats for large

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numbers of as-yet-to-be-described amphibians and reptiles, insects and

hummingbirds. Twenty percent or more of cloud forest species may be

endemics.

A critical habitat: their unique ecology and the fact that they are more

often than not located on steep mountain slopes make cloud forests

particularly susceptible to climate change and habitat fragmentation. At the

same time, the cloud forests provide humans with essential ecosystem

services. For example, the La Tigra National Park cloud forest in Honduras

provides over 40% of the pure water supply sustaining the one million

inhabitants of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. In Guatemala the Sierra de las

Minas Biosphere Reserve, which protects around 50% of the countrys

remaining cloud forest, is the countries biggest source of fresh water. Some

60 permanent rivers flow from the reserve and provide irrigation for one of

the regions major agricultural zones.