Are Your Palm Sunday Palms Bad for the Environment?

Slate ^ | Friday, March 22, 2013 8:08 AM | Jay Wexler

[Olog-hai]

March 24 is Palm Sunday, which means that millions of Christians across the country will be celebrating Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem by carrying palm leaves, often shaped in the form of a cross, into their places of worship. Where do these palms come from? Most likely they have been imported from one of a few Latin American countries: Guatemala, Belize, or southern Mexico, for instance. And most likely, they have been harvested in a manner that is harmful to the environment. Harvesters are often paid by volume rather than quality, and they have a strong incentive to cut as many leaves as possible, without paying attention to what this reckless cutting is doing to the fragile forests of one of the world’s most important ecological regions.

In a few select communities in northern Guatemala and the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, however, villagers—with help from governmental public lands agencies and organizations such as Rainforest Alliance and Pronatura Sur—have adopted a series of impressive harvesting practices aimed at protecting the environment and ensuring a long-term supply of sustainably-harvested palms. Because palm plants need the shade of the forest’s tall trees to survive, maintaining a sustainable palm crop also gives villagers an incentive to protect the forests as a whole. Churches in the United States should buy their palms from these villages. …

[Jemian]

without paying attention to what this reckless cutting is doing to the fragile forests of one of the world’s most important ecological regions.

Give me a break! Fragile?! Not hardly. Things grow very fast in the rainforest.

[left that other site]

Agreed!