The raucous, striking and endangered scarlet macaw is one of the world’s largest parrots. With its creamy white face and brilliant red, blue and yellow plumage, the bird fetches a handsome price on the black market, up to $650 in many Latin American countries, and its capture is a coup for wildlife poachers, who sometimes set fires and even track biologists in their resolute quest for valuable chicks. But poachers don’t pose the only threat to the scarlet macaw or to the ecosystem. Slash and-burn farming, cattle ranching and poorly planned development are also endangering the scarlet macaw as well as a number of other species that inhabit Latin America’s forests.

One of the best hopes for the scarlet macaw’s survival may be community-based forest concessions such as those in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve, which are certified by the Rainforest Alliance to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). “The community-based forest concessions have played a central role in the conservation of scarlet macaw habitat in the reserve by helping to halt the advance of deforestation and fire and by increasing awareness of the contributions of biodiversity to local people,”explains the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Guatemala program director Roan McNab.

For several years, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Rainforest Alliance have been working with local community members throughout the reserve to protect their natural resources, with an emphasis on forest fire prevention and control. WCS has also been monitoring populations of key wildlife species such as the scarlet macaw, protecting nests, building artificial nests and conducting awareness raising initiatives, including working with local schools where students are helping to inventory the birds.

The Rainforest Alliance’s work in the area and its contribution to scarlet macaw protection is about to become the focus of a new middle school curriculum for the Learning Site, the Rainforest Alliance’s free, online environmental education program for kindergarten through middle school students. “We chose to focus on the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala because the Rainforest Alliance’s work with communities in the region has been enormously beneficial for forests and wildlife, and because the local residents have demonstrated tremendous dedication to conservation,” remarks Rainforest Alliance education program manager Julianne Schrader. “Our lessons will provide an excellent way for students to understand the wonders of the biosphere reserve, how our lives are connected to these forests and the role we all play in protecting the Earth’s precious natural resources.” Funding for this new curriculum has been provided by a long-term supporter of the Rainforest Alliance’s community conservation activities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve.

The Rainforest Alliance has worked with communities in the Maya Biosphere Reserve since 1998, certifying sustainable forestry operations and helping local communities and industries to sell their wood and wood products to international markets. With approximately 5 million acres (2.1 million hectares), the reserve was established in 1990 to protect Guatemala’s Petén forest. It is Central America’s largest protected area and most biologically diverse expanse of tropical forest, holding over a dozen important archaeological sites and such rare wildlife as jaguars, brocket deer, ocellated turkeys and scarlet macaws. Forty percent of the reserve has been classified as a multiple-use zone, where extractive enterprises and subsistence agriculture are allowed. Another 36 percent of the reserve’s land is protected, and 24 percent serves as a buffer zone.

The Guatemalan government began granting forest concessions within the reserve’s multiple-use zone in 1994, and today 12 community and two commercial concessions manage local timber industries. All have been certified by the Rainforest Alliance to meet the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international organization that promotes responsible management of the world’s forests.

Uaxactún is one such community, located in the rainforest north of Tikal National Park. With the help of the Rainforest Alliance, community members sell non-traditional wood species to several companies, produce special cuts of mahogany for Gibson guitars and export weekly shipments of jade palm leaves (xate) to the US floral supplier Continental Floral Greens. The lucrative sale of the certified products provides an incentive for community members to protect their resources.

In nearby Carmelita, members of the forestry cooperative have steadily increased the profits from their sustainable forestry business and have invested more than a third of their earnings in community development, improved technology and sustainable management methods. “I used to think that the way to protect the forest was to say, ‘stop, don’t touch.’ We put people in jail and confiscated the illegal wood. But the forest just kept getting smaller and smaller,” explains Carlos Crasborn, the 23-year-old leader of the Carmelita cooperative. “I realize now that a more effective way to conserve the rainforest is to show the people who live there that they can make a better living by managing the forest sustainably than they would if they cut it down. This is something we are accomplishing in Guatemala, and that we would like to repeat in and around Central America’s other biosphere reserves in order to ensure the survival of this region’s endangered wilderness.”

Note: The scarlet macaw is a bellwether species for conservationists. Able to fly at speeds of up to 35 miles an hour, these wide-ranging birds have been identified as part of a suite of so-called “landscape species,” because of their use in defining ecologically meaningful conservation areas. Other animals used to quantify the impact of threats, such as habitat loss and poaching, include jaguars, tapir and white-lipped peccaries. Biologists believe that by protecting these animals, they can diminish threats facing large swaths of critical habitats, other wildlife and the local communities.