Community Cloud Forest Conservation

Kids & Birds is an environmental education program for Q’eqchi’ Maya primary school students, a four-day learning experience on site at our agroecology center. Students return home with starter plants & seeds of traditional crops for their family’s agroforestry parcel, a coloring book of locally occurring warblers, and with a conservation ethic to protect the cloud forest.

The Kids & Birds program is authorized by the Guatemala Ministry of Education.

CCFC has identified over 1,000 acres of Priority Reforestation Areas (PRAs), all of which are within one of two Important Bird Areas (IBAs). Our Reforestation Initiative has pinpointed these areas, acre by acre. CCFC is entering into reforestation agreements with plantation owners and cloud forest villages that will protect and restore these forests. Because the Yalijux – Cacquipec – Xucaneb corridor is so densely populated, CCFC’s reforestation projects involve the whole community. We create project “buy in” among village families through education, field trips and job opportunities. These partnerships allow CCFC not only to reforest PRAs, but also to secure long-term conservation easements on lands vulnerable to agricultural encroachment.