Nature & Ecology

Science and nature meet in Uruapan
By Catherine Krantz

Alongside the peaceful roar of the Cupatizio River in Uruapan, a garden grows; guided by man and nature, amid waterfalls and vine laden trees dripping with orchids, a non-profit organization finds it feet.

The state of Michoacan, and especially Uruapan, two-and-a-half hours north of Zihuatanejo, is known for its lush vegetation, a place were anything can grow and it is hard to imagine a more idyllic site for a nursery. Pedro Hernandez Provenzal has been in the nursery business for over 25 years and works with national reforestation projects, over the years producing millions of pine trees, and piece-by-piece fine tuning the cultivation process. He designed and began manufacturing his own Styrofoam planters to grow the thousands of seedlings, and the machinery to use them. He built a laboratory and developed his own growing medium and soil mix (which he sells under the brand name Creci Root), and along the way created an entire planting system for large scale cultivation.

Pedro has had a life-long interest in plants and propagation and when he became interested in cloning, he decided to learn all he could and started up a cloning laboratory as well. He became active in reforestation projects in his native Michoacan and up until five years ago worked mainly for the Mexican army. All reforestation projects in Mexico were handled by the army: they would produce the trees, construct and maintain nurseries all over the country, and over-see the planting. The results, like most bureaucratic endeavors, were inconsistent and expensive, and so within the last three to five years they started hiring non-profit organizations with proven track records to take over and localize the growing and distribution.

Around this time Pedro’s cousin, Julio Garcia Provenzal, came back to Uruapan and convinced Pedro to go into the non-profit sector himself. Advanced propagation technologies had always been dominant in commercial areas but were woefully absent in the social, environmental and non-profit world where low-tech was the rule. Together they created the non-profit association, Reverdece, A.C., to put Pedro’s experience and advanced technologies to good use. Reverdece, A.C. now focuses on: Reforestation; Protecting endangered plant species; Environmental Education and community outreach; and building and maintaining organic banks--banks of organic material: seeds, plants, cells that can be used and kept indefinitely.

Just a few steps up from the river is the laboratory and its organic bank of 5000 orchid plants. This is plant propagation on a very large scale, thousands upon thousand of trees, rows upon rows of flowers, with an additional 350,000 pine seedlings in a nursery outside town. They are now not only providing plants to the reforestation project but are developing entire low-cost plant propagation systems. They plan to give work-shops with the hope that they can train even the smallest communities to take over planting systems of their own, to reforest in their own areas and protect their own endangered plant species, and they know that in the long run that will be more important than the plant production itself.

Reverdece, A.C., is building an education center and they are already contemplating the potential of their beautiful site, botanical gardens with winding paths alongside the river highlighting regional plants with the natural water garden a constant murmur in the background. All seems possible on this fertile ground. One can easily envision café tables and peaceful lounging in this organic Eden. But, however beautiful, this is a place of work, and an afternoon’s conversation with Julio and Pedro quickly points to the complexity of plant propagation and reforestation and just how much work is yet to be done.

“An estimated half of the world’s species –a huge preponderance of its biodiversity—are to be found in forests, especially those in the tropics…,” writes Hosny El-Lakany, Assistant Director General of the FAO Forestry Department in Italy, “Sustainable forest management, and the ability of any forest to meet the human demand for goods and services, will depend on scientific and technological advances.”

Human beings are voracious animals and the earth’s environment has seen the result. As civilizations grow some level of deforestation is inevitable, the chore then becomes how to control it and manage it more wisely. Reverdece, A.C., is doing their part in Michoacan by mass producing the plants and trees to reforest what man and nature take away, by collecting and maintaining stores of plant life to protect endangered species for reintroduction and by training others to do the same. A lush place where it is hard to imagine a barren land devoid of plant life, is perhaps the right place to start.

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