Abstract
This chapter describes the landscape-scale, national and regional influence of a rural property that forms a biodiversity island within a monoculture landscape. Managed continuously by nine generations of the Molina family, El Hatico Nature Reserve embodies a set of values grounded in a deep connection to the land. Between 1960 and 1990, the fertile flatlands of the Cauca River valley lost almost all dry forest remnants, wetlands, traditional annual crops, and agroforestry systems, adopting a uniform method of sugarcane production that modified stream banks, eliminated the small-scale topographic heterogeneity, and integrated periodic burning and herbicide applications as part of the management protocols. Meanwhile, El Hatico gained tree cover, enhanced its soil quality, conserved its forest fragments, transformed its conventional pastures into biodiverse silvopastoral systems and transitioned to agroecological sugarcane production. El Hatico’s long tradition of agricultural and livestock research and detailed production records helped develop the highly efficient intensive silvopastoral systems in which cattle graze on nitrogen-fixing fodder shrubs interspersed with grasses and under the shade of native trees. These silvopastures have inspired thousands of technical assistants, extension workers and farmers in Colombia and other Latin American countries to undertake the transformation of conventional cattle ranching systems. Simultaneously, El Hatico developed organic sugarcane by applying the principles of agroecology to produce sugar while storing carbon, enhancing the soil biota and making an efficient use of water. El Hatico’s forest fragment is surrounded by a wildlife-friendly silvopastoral matrix that is permeable to the movements of birds and arthropods. This property’s unique combination of land uses provides a model for the integration of agroecology, agroforestry and ecological restoration.
Coauthor Carlos Hernán Molina passed away during the final stage of editing this book. None of the innovations described in this chapter would exist were it not for his leadership, moral courage and commitment to generational exchange and agroecology. With admirable clarity and wisdom, he guided his family through decades of dramatic land use change and stood up for a diversified agricultural production against the ravaging advance of monoculture. Thanks to Carlos Hernán, El Hatico persists as a biodiversity island.
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Notes
- 1.
Lucerna is another rural property dedicated to organic milk and sugarcane production, located in Bugalagrande, Valle del Cauca.
- 2.
The Colombian Sustainable Cattle Ranching Project (CSCRP) was designed by an alliance between the Global Environment Fund (GEF), the UK government, FEDEGAN, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), CIPAV and Fondo Acción, under the supervision of The World Bank. It took place from 2010 to 2020 in five ecoregions where cattle ranching exists close to protected areas, and aimed to overcome the main barriers to the adoption of sustainable practices.
- 3.
- 4.
Environmental Leadership & Training Initiative at Yale University’s School of the Environment, a program dedicated to capacity building for forest and landscape restoration in the tropics.
- 5.
Center for Research on Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems (www.cipav.org.co), a Colombian organization dedicated to research, training and outreach on sustainable agriculture and livestock production, ecosystem services, water-based systems and ecological restoration.
- 6.
The Latin American Scientific Society for Agroecology (www.soclaglobal.com)
- 7.
The Global Agenda for Sustainable Livestock, established in 2011, is a multi-stakeholder partnership with the aim of fostering and guiding the sustainable development of the global livestock sector in alignment with the SDG framework of the UN Agenda 2030. It provides a platform to address comprehensively the sector’s multiple challenges towards sustainable development by facilitating global dialogue and encouraging local practice and policy change, focusing on innovation, capacity building, incentive systems and enabling environments (www.livestockdialogue.com)
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Calle D, Z. et al. (2022). A Highly Productive Biodiversity Island Within a Monoculture Landscape: El Hatico Nature Reserve (Valle del Cauca, Colombia). In: Montagnini, F. (eds) Biodiversity Islands: Strategies for Conservation in Human-Dominated Environments. Topics in Biodiversity and Conservation, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92234-4_11
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