Fadir - environmental engineer for APLV in the Cerro Musul protected area, one of his favorite places (View on flickr)

The second day we were in Rio Blanco at APLV in Rio Blanco Fadir Rojas, APLV's reforestation engineer, took us for a hike up into the beautiful Cerro Musún wilderness reserve right next to the town, where he used to work as an engineer and ranger. We spent the afternoon climbing up into virgin forest to a beautiful waterfall called Cascada Las Golondrinas (the swallows). As we walked along we chatted about his responsibilities with APLV and the growing importance of reforestation within the goals of the organization.
Fadir is from a purely campesino family in the dry, heavily populated western part of the country. His parents barely went to school - perhaps to the first grade - and can't really read, but they pushed education in their family and Fadir is one of four university graduates in his family. He succeeded in getting full scholarships for his university education at the national university and is now, at 27, one of the elite young leaders of Nicaragua.

When Fadir came to APLV he found that their vision of reforestation was too limited: They understood the idea of using forest management to project the water source from contamination, but the integrated management plan did not include enough emphasis on protecting the watershed itself from deforestation. Of course any spring depends on the waters beng gathered by its watershed, and will dry up if all the trees are cut to provide pasture for cattle, or if all the upstream land is pressed into an inappropriate type of service.

So Fadir is trying to enhance the current protection model of reforestation with an additional watershed management model. He's a bright young man with a great grasp of what's going on and we think he'll succeed.