Guatemala is a storehouse of unique ecosystems.  This small country houses over 8000 species of plants in 19 different ecosystems ranging from the mangrove forests on both coasts to the pine forests of the mountainous interior to the cloud forests at higher altitudes.

The destruction of tropical forests throughout Guatemala is progressing at an alarming rate.  The rapid growth of agriculture and cattle farming is a serious threat to the ecology. (Brosnahan, T and Keller, N., 1997).  As well, migration, with its accompanying fires and deforestation underscores the problems facing Guatemala as it emerges from 36 years of civil war.  Peasants, including thousands who returned after years of exile in Mexico, scramble to find a patch of land they can farm. In their struggle for self-preservation, conservation is forgotten.

The most common form of agriculture in Guatemala is slash and burn agriculture. Settlers burn trees and bushes to clear new farm land and enrich the ground with nutrients.  The land is arable for three years at most, then new land is cleared. The Guatemalan government lacks money and manpower to fight all the fires, much less arrest wrongdoers. (New York Times, 1999)

Unfortunately, the problem of deforestation is not only confined to Guatemala. The bad news is that forests are disappearing worldwide. The forests have taken thousands of years to grow, but in one week, an area the size of Luxembourg (2400 km2) will have been destroyed. An area the size of a soccer field is deforested every two seconds. Nearly 80% of the world's large areas of ancient forests have already been destroyed (World Resource Institute), much of it in the last three decades.

In total, 76 countries have already lost all of their ancient forest areas.  This is a serious threat because forests are a living representation of three billion years of evolution of life on Earth. They contain as much as 90% of the world's land-based species. Tropical forests are storehouses of chemical and biological substances and gene material.