TOURISM AND FOREST LIVELIHOODS: LINKING ARCHITECTURE WITH TROPICAL FOREST MANAGEMENT By JOSÉ ANTONIO SIERRA HUELSZ A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 José Antonio Sierra Huelsz To Mane and Mateo, my sources of inspiration and love To my parents for their ever loving support ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to my exceptional advisor Dr. Karen A. Kainer for her generous mentoring, for being a great teacher, colleague and friend. My committee contributed substantially to the conception of this dissertation, pushing me to think in new directions. I am very thankful to Erick Keys, Francis “Jack” Putz, Patricia Negreros- Castillo and Salvador Gezan for their stimulating perspectives and feedback. In particular, I am in debt with Dr. Negreros-Castillo for inspiring me to work in Quintana Roo and facilitating my landing in the Zona Maya. I would like to thank Wendell P. Cropper for his kind support at the early stages of this journey. This dissertation was enriched by the time, knowledge, and creativity of Sebastián Palmas Pérez, Angélica Navarro Martinez, Pedro Antonio Macario Mendoza, and Mirna Valdez Hernández - all who kindly collaborated in this process. Santos Colli Balam has been an irreplaceable friend, bush colleague, and cultural ambassador. Without Angel David Cab Argüelles, Edgar Can Balam, and the ever supportive X-Pichil crew, my fieldwork plans would be just an unrealized dream. Tarín Toledo Aceves, Eddie A. Ellis and Horacio Paz Hernández kindly provided essential support for accessing funds that helped make this project possible; many thanks to you all. León Ibarra González and José Luis Tapia Muñoz were extremely helpful in providing expert botanical identifications and kindly sharing their knowledge and passion for tropical plants. To my good fortune, I have crossed paths with Silvia Purata Velarde and Charles M. Peters who have been an invaluable influence in my career as mentors and supporters. I am very grateful to the University of Florida and its School of Forest Resources and Conservation for the generous financial support through the Graduate School 4 Fellowship. This fieldwork also was financed thanks to a Rufford Small Grant for Nature Conservation through The Rufford Foundation and a Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) Field Research Grant. Carmen Domene and Salvador de la Peña warmly supported me by providing the vessel that allowed me to traverse the country and crisscross the backroads of the Yucatan. Patricia Sampaio and Cynthia Height have been essential guides in navigating UF procedures and logistics; to them both I extend my appreciation. My friends of Proselva Tropical provided exceptional support to this project. I am in debt to Ing. Victoria Santos Jiménez, Ing. Rosa Ledesma Santos, Gonzalo Tzuc May, Fidel Tec Sulub, Juan Xix Dzul, Randy Carreón Santos, Brígido Vásquez Maldonado, and Mónica García Velázquez. I am thankful for the invaluable support received from Ing. José Antonio Arreola Palacios, Ing. Celso Vidal Chan Rivas, Ing. Luis Alfonso Argüelles Suárez, Ing. Gustavo Martínez Ferral and family, Ing. Abraham González Sosa, Ing. Hugo Alfredo Galletti Busi, Ing. Ofelio Guatemala Bienpica, Ing. Roy Jabín Carreón Santos, Ing. Alfredo Manrique Huchim Chablé, Ing. Carlos Escobar Ruiz and the staff of SEMARNAT branch at Chetumal. I also want to thank the thoughtful insights of Pascual Blanco Reyes. Many paliceros, zacateros, palaperos and campesinos shared their craft with me - to them all, my immense appreciation. For research protocol reasons I cannot reproduce the names of the people and communities who, with a healthy sense of humor and great generosity, shared their pozol and teachings. I smoothly landed into the Zona Maya largely thanks to my friend Dawn Rodríguez. Sonja Lillvik and Armando “Cuzan” López Rosado, the Esquivel Gray family 5 and Miguel Enrique Cahuich Piña made Carrillo a second home to me - to them, my hugs and my gratitude. Maritza Yeh Chan and her family have all my gratefulness for opening the doors of their house and sharing their knowledge, friendship and wisdom. At UF I have found friends, colleagues, paddlers, reviewers, buddies, philosophical comrades, and aunts and uncles for Mateo. Constanza Ríos, Claudia Monzón, Sergio Padilla, Sebastián Palmas, Timoteo Mesh, Natalie Cooper, Todd Bertwell, Mauricio Nuñez-Regueiro, Cristina Núñez, Paloma Carton de Grammont, Yankuic Galvan Miyoshi, Sami Rifai, Rodrigo Castro, Hans Goertz and Verity Salmon: your friendship has been a source of great joy. Sharing delicious pieces of this journey with Sydney Nylan, Tshibangu Kalala, Margaret Clifford, Li Jie, Michael Bauman, Thales West, Amanda Monroe, Trent Blare, Angelica Garcia, Maria Fernanda Checa and Daniel Zurita, Iván Cabrera and many more has been an immense pleasure. I will be always thankful to my brothers and sisters of a different mother, Radio KKhuate Intl. Inc. and its beloved crew: Lai, Emiliano, Davi, Aletz, Louise, Marambo, Ale, Mai, Pau, Iván, Ana, Pierre, Chofs; and my dear Memo and Güilis. Very especial thanks to Abril for driving with me the last and some of the best +3,000 km of this journey. The Huelsz Lesbros, Sierra Cedillo, and de la Peña Domene families provided their caring support - a warm hug to you all. And last but not least, I want to give a gigantic thank you to my parents for their always loving encouragement and support. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................... 10 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 11 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 12 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 15 Framing this Dissertation: Demands of Tourism as a Driver of Forest Management ........................................................................................................ 15 Area Studied ........................................................................................................... 17 Expected Impacts ................................................................................................... 19 2 RISK OF LOCAL SPECIES COLLAPSE IN CONTEXT: ECOLOGICAL VULNERABILITY AND HARVEST PRESSURE OF A SPECIES-DIVERSE TROPICAL FOREST PRODUCT IN COMMUNAL LANDSCAPES ........................ 21 Risk of Local Species Collapse ............................................................................... 21 Species-Diverse Resources .................................................................................... 22 Tropical Polewood as Case Study .......................................................................... 23 Methods .................................................................................................................. 25 Study Area ........................................................................................................ 25 Species of Study .............................................................................................. 27 Data Sources .................................................................................................... 28 On-site assessment of polewood harvests ................................................ 29 Harvester interviews .................................................................................. 30 Commercial demand .................................................................................. 31 Vulnerability indicators ............................................................................... 32 Data Analysis ................................................................................................... 34 Spatial patterns of harvests ........................................................................ 34 Risk of local species collapse .................................................................... 34 Results .................................................................................................................... 34 Harvest Patterns Detected ............................................................................... 34 Risk of Local Species Collapse ........................................................................ 35 Harvester Perceptions Corroborate Measured Risk ......................................... 37 Buyers´ Preferences Exacerbate Risk of Local Collapse for Some Species .... 37 Harvest Pressure is not Proportional Across Size Classes .............................. 38 7 Management Practices Observed that Mitigate Risk of Local Species Collapse ........................................................................................................ 40 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 42 Harvest Patterns ............................................................................................... 42 Risk of Local Species Collapse .......................................................................