Too much tequila is causing headaches for biologists concerned about the survival of wild species of agave, a plant native to the dry forests of southern Mexico. Tequila is made by baking the heart, or piña, of Agave tequilana, a succulent plant grown to produce the potent spirit.

During the 1990s, tequila´s popularity unexpectedly soared, leaving producers without sufficient supplies of cultivated A. tequilana to meet demand. An agave must be at least eight-years-old before it produces a sugar-rich piña. So to keep the liquor flowing, bottlers are mixing in other distilled agave species, including the wild varieties used to make mezcal. Now there's not just a shortage of A. tequilana but species of wild agave also are in jeopardy.

Further threatening wild agave, called maguey in Mexico, is the growing demand for mezcal. Mezcal's rich, smoky flavor is produced by roasting the piñas over charcoal in pit ovens that are covered by palm fibers and soil. The smoldering charcoal comes from local trees, usually oak, so mezcal production also increases deforestation.

A Mexico-based organization called the Environmental Studies Group (GEA, in its Spanish acronym), is tackling the ecological problems caused by the tequila and mezcal industries, which are economically vital to rural farmers. Through a local growers' organization called Sanzekan Tinemi, GEA helps rural farmers in Guerrero state learn how to sustainably farm a wild species, Agave cupreata, and to plant more native trees that will eventually provide firewood for mezcal pits.

GEA and Sanzekan Tinemi, which means "we continue harvesting together" in the Náhuatl language, are working in 19 indigenous and mestizo communities in four Guerrero municipalities. GEA biologist Catarina Illsley notes that the region is one of the poorest in Guerrero, whose most famous Pacific coastal town is glitzy Acapulco. "About the only resources these people have," she says, "are non-timber products" from Guerrero's dwindling dry forests.

Six years ago GEA began working with Sanzekan Tinemi to market products from palm trees, which grow in abundance in the area. Palm fronds are sold nationally and internationally, but at very low prices. Farmers make just $6 a month from the palm leaves they harvest, dry, and braid. "Now it's clear that the resource with the most economic potential is maguey," Illsley says.

Farmers are eager for GEA's help in designing a sustainable management plan for maguey, because, she explains, "they have seen that wild agave is disappearing right before their eyes. There are communities that have been producing mezcal for 50 years, and now no plants remain."

She points out that up until some 15 years ago, it was illegal to produce artisan mezcal, a law she thinks had less to do with protecting tequileros than with discrimination against indigenous communities whose traditional cultures have been intertwined with agave brews for centuries. Once production became legal, however, the local and national trade quickly developed. "People form clubs that have contacts with someone who knows someone else in a community who has a good mezcal," she says. "It's almost an underground market, but a fast-growing one."

With help from GEA, the Sanzekan Tinemi mezcaleros created seven community nurseries that yield more than one million plants each year both maguey and native trees for firewood. The 40,000 liters of mezcal they produce annually require some 300 tons of firewood. Illsley notes that at first it was harder to convince farmers to plant trees for firewood, since there have always been sufficient trees. But if deforestation continues at its current rate, she worries that erosion and deterioration of water quality will become serious problems. As part of a maguey management and research project, she hopes to establish experimental firewood plantations. Meanwhile, the communities have set aside seven protected areas, ranging in size from 25 (10 ha) to 250 acres (100 ha), where cattle and all harvesting of flora and fauna are banned.

Albino Tacotempla Zapoteco, coordinator for Sanzekan Tinemi, says that GEA's work is particularly effective because the group closely collaborates with the local farmers. "Catarina and her colleagues are sensitive to the way these farmers do things," he says. "They make an effort to transfer the academic knowledge that they bring and place it in the hands of the rural producers, so together they form a practical, technical team."

Another GEA project goal is to learn more about Agave cupreata ecology in the wild, such as how many plants remain, where nursery-grown seedlings should be planted and under what conditions. Illsley also hopes to identify the plant's pollinator. While farmers point to a moth or bee, the biologist strongly suspects the plants are pollinated by nectar-feeding, long-tongued bats (Glossophaginae), known to be the chief pollinators of other agave species. Since there are numerous superstitions and ominous local legends about bats, she knows she will have to present clear evidence an undisputable photograph -- if her hunch is correct.

The bats have more than just an image problem. Nectar-feeding bats are in serious decline due to loss of habitat and diminishing food sources, and agave production is partly to blame. To produce tequila or mezcal, piñas are cut from agaves before they can flower, which deprives the mammals of an important food source.

By setting aside forest reserves where wild agaves are allowed to flourish and flower, the Sanzekan Tinemi communities are also helping bats. The GEA project has a $45,000 annual budget and is supported by Mexico's National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity and the National Reforestation Program. In addition, Illsley was just awarded a Kleinhans fellowship, a research scholarship managed by the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit conservation group that also publishes Eco-Exchange.

Recently, the Sanzekan Tinemi farmers formed the Association of Magueyeros y Mezcalereos de Chilapa, after the village in the central mountain range of Guerrero where a particular agave plant they call papalote de Chilapa grows wild, on just one mountain slope. Tacotempla claims that the mezcal it produces "has a very special taste." Association members cultivate the plant using only organic fertilizers and hope to eventually market the mezcal locally and internationally under a registered label called Mezcal Papalote de Chilapa. @

A bold and controversial forest-conservation experiment is underway in Costa Rica, which, if it succeeds, may prove to be a workable, long-term answer to the problem of rampant tropical deforestation worldwide. Called the Environmental Services Program, the initiative aims to encourage landowners to protect or manage sustainably the forests they own and to reforest land that has already been shorn of trees.

The encouragement comes by way of cash payments to those landowners who sign contracts with the environment ministry's National Forestry Financing Fund (FONAFIFO, in its Spanish acronym). According to Sonia Lobo, a forester with the ministry, the contracts stipulate that:

• Landowners who protect their forests receive $226 per hectare (2.47 acres) over five years, with the option to enter into another contract after five years.
• Landowners who sustainably manage their forests - who submit a plan to extract only a certain number of trees, as defined by a professional forester so as to not damage the ecological integrity of the forest - receive $ 352 per hectare over five years, but at the end of five years must agree to continue managing their forests for at least five more years.
• Landowners who plant trees on deforested land - again, following the plan of a professional forester - receive $ 580 per hectare over five years, but at the end of five years must agree to sustainably manage the reforested land for at least 10 more years.

FONAFIFO director Jorge Mario Rodríguez says the amounts paid are based on the environmental services forests and tree plantations provide - including absorption of Earth-warming carbon dioxide, safeguarded biodiversity, scenic beauty, and clean rivers and streams, which may provide potable water or feed hydroelectric plants.

The payments are funded through a nationwide tax on fuel, international donations, and money collected by charging for the forests' environmental services. For example, Rodríguez says that in July 2000 FONAFIFO signed a contract with the national power and light company, which stipulates the company will pay $5 3 per hectare annually in exchange for the landowner's continued protection of a watershed that provides water for a hydroelectric plant.

Costa Rica has collected additional funding through the sale of "carbon bonds" to foreign countries and utility companies. The bonds are guarantees that Costa Rica will protect an agreed upon number of acres of carbon dioxide-absorbing trees; utility companies are among the largest producers of carbon dioxide.

According to the environmental ministry, nearly 645,000 acres (260,000 hectares) of land are currently enlisted in the Environmental Services Program, of which 85 percent are protected forests, 9 percent are managed forests, and 6 percent are reforestation projects.

To help bolster the program, the German government and the Global Environmenta Facility (GEF), a fund managed by the World Bank and United Nations, have donated about $17 million. The World Bank also provided a $33 million dollar loan that will help ensure that FONAFIFO can meet its contracts with landowners.

GEF's recent $8 million grant will be used only for contracts with landowners who want to protect their forests, explains World Bank natural resources economist John Kellenberg. Nearly a third of the grant must be spent on contracts in three priority areas - Tortuguero, in the northeast; Barbilla, a forested region on the Caribbean slope; and the Osa Peninsula, in the south. The GEF grant also requires that there be a 30 percent increase in the number of women or women's cooperatives involved in the Environmental Services Program and a 100 percent increase in the number of indigenous communities enrolled.

The GEF grant may help quiet one of the main complaints about the program. Quírico Jiménez, a scientist with the Technology Institute of Costa Rica, says that while the initiative can help protect the last forest remnants in the country, he points out that "Payments are not going to the people who really deserve it, the people who are protecting forest." He says that a number of contracts have been awarded to large enterprises that are managing forests.

Since these landowners already profit from the forests - through sale of the timber they extract - they shouldn't receive a higher payment than those who are truly protecting their forests, he reasons.

In addition, enrolling in the Environmental Services Program is expensive, because forest technicians must be hired to gather and present all the required information. "Small landowners end up using much of the money they receive from the program to pay the technicians," Jiménez says. To really make the program work, he believes that payments for forest protection must be higher. "Under the current plan, a landowner needs 175 hectares minimum to earn an adequate living. A person who has only five hectares could die from hunger." A landowner with five hectares of forest, or 12 acres, would receive about $1,100 over five years, under the current scheme.

Environmentalist Susana Salas represents SelvaTica, an organization that owns 1730 acres of forest that connects to a national park on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. She says that SelvaTica signed a contract with the Foundation for the Protection of the Central Volcanic Range that, for a fee, handled all the studies and paperwork required for the environmental services. The payments bring in enough money, she says, to cover the costs of guarding the forest.

She acknowledges that Selva Tica's U.S. owners do not depend on the land to provide their incomes, but believes their intention to protect the forest they purchased warrants the payment.

People's good intentions are key to the success of the Environmental Services Program. There's a risk that landowners may renege on their obligations, or that after five years of payments for protection they then decide to log their forests. FONAFIFO director Rodríguez points out that the country's forestry law would prohibit this, but Jiménez counters that the law is full of loopholes, plus the country has a high rate of illegal logging.

But Guido Chávez of the environment ministry believes there are mechanisms in place to ensure compliance, including follow-up visits to lands enrolled in the Environmental Services Program, annual inspections, surprise visits to forestry operations, such as sawmills, and check points on the highways to stop logging trucks and verify their permits. Vigilance by private citizens who need to file official complaints is also important, he says, and "these complaints require appropriate judicial response."

In spite of the risks, World Bank economist Kellenberg thinks it's worth giving the program a chance to work. "Costa Rica has done an admirable job so far," he says. "The country has a forest-conservation program that is unparalleled, 15 years ahead of its time."

Other countries are beginning to investigate environmental services programs of their own. One example is the efforts of a nonprofit group in Guatemala called Fundación Solar. With funds from a US Agency for International Development-supported conservation project called Regional Environmental Program for Central America/Protected Areas System, and from the Dutch aid agency Hivos, the group has been working for the past year to evaluate the monetary worth of the services provided by the forests around Lake Atitlán.

The lake is a popular tourist attraction, generating millions of dollars annually from visitors, while the lake's harvested fish are worth hundreds of thousands. Fundación Solar wants to determine the monetary value of Atitlán's forests - which keep the lake from silting up, furnish potable water, absorb carbon dioxide, and provide scenic beauty.

Oscar Coto of Fundación Solar says that project staff have worked closely with residents of Lake Atitlán, most of whom support the idea of receiving payment for conserving forests. Others worry about having their activities restricted. He thinks that for an Environmental Services Program to work in Guatemala, the government "must clearly and precisely explain its benefits" to the public.

For the moment, "everyone's eyes are on Costa Rica," says Kellenberg. "The success of the program here has important implications for forest conservation in other countries." If the Environmental Services Program doesn't work in Costa Rica, he concludes, it's unlikely that international funding for similar programs will be available elsewhere. @