Sustainable Forestry in Puerto Rico

Established in 1983, the land known as Las Casas de la Selva is the home of Tropic Ventures Sustainable Forestry & Rainforest Enrichment Project, in Patillas, Puerto Rico. Silvicultural techniques developed and applied at Las Casas de la Selva over the last four decades, demonstrate, that on a small scale in Puerto Rico, secondary forests can be ecologically and economically suitable for sustainable timber production. This eco-technology was implemented to encourage similar practices in the Caribbean and globally, as a contribution to economic development that gives value to wood, encourages local protection and sustainable management of secondary tropical forests, and grows a mindful resistance towards the mindless deforestation occurring in other countries.

For nearly forty years, Las Casas de la Selva, and her core volunteer teams, have seen people from all over the planet, engage, live and work in her forest- in all areas of science, art, and management. Learning by doing; gathering valuable data, gathering experiences about life and human interaction in this forest biome, striving to continue and keep the process of creating ecological and sustainable communities, benefiting our biosphere, going, going, and never gone.

“Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.”

– Aldo Leopold-