Macocael is absolutely correct (as it is his custom). Once the DR finally chooses to address a problem, it inevitably comes down with very rigid formulas to deal with them, rather than sensible alternatives. I'll share a bit of my experience.
There are no campesinos in my family but as an investment/hobby back in the late 1970s and early 1980s my dad decided to buy some land in the DR. It was a well tended beautiful finquita less than 5 km southwest of Higuey where we initially raised cattle rather successfully. We also had cashew trees, mangoes, avocados and a number of other fruits.
At one time we decided to diversify our use of the land and and embarked on a larger scale more formal citrus proyect, with limes, oranges and lemons. We hired an Israeli agronomist to perform soil assessments, we secured financing and permits from Banco Agricola and Dept of Agriculture, we spent significant amounts of money clearing the brush, buying seeds, updating the irrigation system etc...and then we hit a wall: Foresta wouldn't give us a permit to move forward because in the midst of the parts of the farm where we planned to use there were perhaps 20-30 mahogany trees. We pleaded for alternatives, we offered reforesting other areas, we offered to pay fees while refusing to pay any bribes, etc. All the answers were negative. We got sick of it and ended up selling the whole thing a couple of years later. I might add that we are rather well-connected with people in decision-making posts and in fact my dad-in-law had himself been Director Nacional de Foresta before this whole thing happened. That did not help at all, "wrong administration" even though he was not a politico or affiliated with any party.
Last that I've heard, is that the area where our finca was has now been developed for homes (it is less than 10 mins. from "downtown" Higuey). Instead of having sustainable development alternatives that produce jobs and protect the land, they ultimately chose -quite possibly through bribes- to change the zoning altogether and put cement and polluters instead of a conscientious small agribusinnes. Go figure.
Same thing goes with hunting. In
PR with similar migratory birds population for example, they have sensible hunting laws...permits, fees, seasons, protected zones, quotas, enforcement by rangers, etc.. in the DR, where indeed some people often abused the habitat and overkilled the birds (hundreds per hunter in one outing!!) one good day Dr. Balaguer decided that the best thing was to perennially ban hunting everywhere in the country altogether. Period. Now people poach, use insecticides and illegal hunters kill whatever and whenever they want, and just bribe whoever with a military uniform might raise an eyebrow, heck the guardias are often the 'mochileros' (retrievers).
In the DR unfortunately it is too often the ALL-GOOD vs ALL-BAD artificial dichotomies that carry the day.
- Tordok
**Mirador, edited or not you still kind of owe me that source about those animals. Thanks.
