Tree Weaver

The Legend of the Sacred Stag

Long ago, in the heart of the enchanted forest, a majestic stag roamed, its antlers reaching toward the stars, a symbol of the bond between the earth, the skies, and all living things. The stag was no ordinary creature; it carried the wisdom of the ancient world within its spirit, and the forest itself was its home.

The Great Spirit of the Earth called upon the stag one day, for the balance of nature had begun to falter. The harmony between the land and the heavens was at risk, and only the Sacred Stag could restore the flow of life. With a heart full of purpose, the stag set off on a journey to the edge of the world, where the sun touched the mountains and the moon embraced the sea.

As it moved through forests and over rivers, the stag encountered many challenges. The winds of change blew fiercely, and the rivers swelled with the weight of the forgotten spirits. But the stag’s spirit was strong, its heart bound to the rhythm of nature itself. Every step it took, the earth beneath it seemed to sing with life, a reminder that the power to heal the world lay within the most sacred of creatures.

Finally, at the summit of the highest mountain, the stag stood before the Celestial Circle, a mystical altar where the realms of the earth and the sky met. With a deep breath, the stag raised its antlers toward the heavens, calling upon the stars, the moon, and the sun to restore balance. A brilliant light flooded the land as the stag’s cry echoed across the universe, and the forces of nature aligned once again.

The stag returned to the forest, its spirit forever linked with the pulse of the earth, the wind, and the waters. It became a symbol of wisdom, renewal, and the interconnectedness of all living things.

Moral: Just as the Sacred Stag carries the spirit of the earth within its being, so too must we carry the wisdom and strength to restore balance when the world feels out of harmony. The power to heal and renew is within all of us, connected by the spirit of nature.

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‘Revenge’ for a planning dispute or the desire to get a souvenir for a newborn girl were the possible reasons two groundworkers cut down Britain’s most famous tree, it can be revealed today as they were both found guilty.

Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, face up to ten years in prison for felling the Sycamore Gap tree during a ‘moronic mission’ which lasted less than three minutes, and causing damage to Hadrian’s Wall in the process.

Jurors found the pair guilty after their friendship degenerated and they tried to pin the blame on each other in court. The verdicts were delivered after five hours of deliberations

The trial previously heard that Carruthers had chopped down the tree so he could present it to his newborn baby girl as a ‘trophy’ – without realising the revulsion this would cause. 

Another theory is that the plot to chop down the tree was hatched as Graham was facing removal from his ramshackle home in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall – branded a ‘shanty town’ by long-suffering neighbours. 

Some locals in the remote rural area are convinced that the groundworker’s motive in targeting the iconic tree stems from his grievance with authority over his failure to secure planning approval for the eyesore he created in the unspoilt landscape.

Graham bought a small plot of farmland in Grinsdale Bridge near the Cumbrian village of Kirkandrews-on-Eden in 2015, the Telegraph reported.

There he quickly established a number of buildings on the property and gained planning permission for a stable block, horse shelter and storage units.

But locals complained when Graham moved into a caravan on the site shortly afterwards, using it as the base for his business, DM Graham Groundworks – which lists tree clearance among its services.

Officers instantly recognised his voice as he told them that ‘one of the lads that [did] it, Adam Carruthers,’ had taken his chainsaws back home.

The ‘anonymous caller’ said if police searched Carruthers’ home and workshop they would find the saws and part of the felled tree, along with a shotgun and a pistol. No firearms, chainsaws or the tree wedge were found, however.

On December 1, 2024, days before the trial was originally scheduled to begin, Graham took to Facebook to accuse Carruthers of felling the tree, posting a series of images of his former friend.

‘I truly would not do it,’ he wrote.

‘It’s my picture everywhere. Well, here’s a picture of the man with [the] hidden face.’

In a tense exchange with Mr Wright during his cross examination, Graham tried to justify turning on his friend.

He developed the land – which he named Millbeck Stables – into a sprawling ‘shanty town’.

When neighbours complained about additional prefab buildings erected without planning permission, the noise of his dogs and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the lorries he used in his groundwork business they were met with aggression.

A neighbour told the Telegraph that Graham had ‘completely destroyed the look and peace of this area’ and that ‘harsh words’ had been exchanged.

‘It was unbelievable that he managed to establish a home there on what had previously been a green field,’ they said.

Graham applied to Cumberland Council for permission to live there lawfully in October 2022 despite never having sought planning permission, the Sun reported.

But after neighbours objected and the local parish council said people felt threatened by his ‘dominant and oppressive behaviour’ it was rejected in April 2023 – leaving him facing eviction.

Just five months later, he and Carruthers chopped down the famous tree.

Now some locals believe the ‘moronic’ Sycamore Gap outrage was his bid for revenge on all those he felt had wronged him.

‘It’s what everyone around here was saying and it makes perfect sense,’ one told the Sun.

‘He considered that caravan his permanent home and had asked the council to legally recognise that.

‘When they refused the only way it could ever have ended for him was being evicted.

‘He’s a tree surgeon, he cuts trees down all the time – what better way, in his eyes, for him to take revenge?’

Meanwhile Graham appealed to the planning inspectorate in a bid to avoid eviction, but that was turned down on April 28, the day before his trial began.

He has six months to find somewhere else to live – however his immediate future is now behind bars.

Richard Wright KC said: ‘Though the tree had grown for over a hundred years, the act of irreparably damaging it was the work of a matter of minutes.’

Graham and Carruthers were ‘best of pals’ at the time and regularly worked together felling trees.

Graham’s Land Rover was picked up on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras between Carlisle and Sycamore Gap at night on September 27 2023, and returning early the next morning. His phone was traced to cell sites making the same journey.

When police arrested the pair and searched Graham’s phone, they found a two minute and 41 second video which showed the sycamore being cut down at 12.30am on September 28, and had been sent to Carruthers.

They also found photos and videos of a wedge of tree trunk and a chainsaw in the boot of Graham’s Range Rover, although these have never been found.

Messages and voice notes between Graham and Carruthers the next day showed them talking about the story going ‘wild’ and ‘viral’, referring to ‘an operation like we did last night’ and joking that damage looked like it had been done by a professional.

A man named Kevin Hartness posted about the tree on Facebook, writing: ‘Some weak people that walk this earth; disgusting behaviour.’

Carruthers sent this post to Graham, and later sent a voice note in which he said: ‘I’d like to see Kevin Hartness launch an operation like we did last night… I don’t think he’s got the minerals.’

In August last year, Graham made an anonymous phone call to the police in an attempt to implicate his friend and save himself.

He said Carruthers and an associate had tried to intimidate him into taking the blame for cutting down the tree, insisting that the criminal justice system would be lenient towards him due to his mental health issues.

He added: ‘If someone is costing me money and affecting my business then I will f***ing grass.

‘No doubt about it he [Carruthers] is the one holding the chainsaw. Adam felled the tree, I don’t know 100 per cent who the other person was.

‘I was annoyed about my business suffering through his actions.’

To explain away number plate and phone site evidence against him, Graham insisted that Carruthers and an accomplice had taken his car, with his phone inside, and driven to the Sycamore Gap without his knowledge while he had been sleeping in his caravan.

Carruthers, for his part, did not directly accuse Graham of being involved in felling the tree.

But he insisted that on the evening the tree was felled he had tried to take his partner and young children for a meal at the Metrocentre in Gateshead but turned back because their 11-day-old baby was unsettled.

Jurors rejected these flimsy alibis and found the pair unanimously guilty of causing criminal damage worth £622,191 to the tree and £1,144 worth of damage to Hadrian’s Wall, a Unesco world heritage site owned by the National Trust.

They now face up to ten years in prison.

Sycamore Gap timeline: How damage to the landmark tree unfolded 

– September 28, 2023

• 12.32am A video is made on Daniel Graham’s phone showing the sound of a chainsaw, followed by the sound of a tree falling
• 9.46am Police receive a report that the Sycamore Gap tree has been damaged. The investigation begins

– October 31, 2023

• Graham and Adam Carruthers are arrested and interviewed. Police find two chainsaws, and a chainsaw blade and cover at Graham’s house

– November 3, 2023

• Graham and Carruthers are arrested and interviewed again. Carruthers’ property is searched and a chainsaw is found

– April 30, 2024

• Graham and Carruthers are charged with criminal damage. They both later plead not guilty.

– April 28, 2025

• The trial of Graham and Carruthers begins at Newcastle Crown Court

– May 9, 2025

• Graham and Carruthers are found guilty of cutting down the tree in an act of ‘deliberate and mindless criminal damage’

July 15, 2025

• Graham and Carruthers will be sentenced

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14695485/Sycamore-Gap-revenge-motive-planning-dispute.html

Fury as 400-year-old Oak Tree is cut down by Toby Carvery in London over ‘health and safety’ fears

Locals are in uproar after an ancient oak tree thought be one of London’s biggest was felled by Toby Carvery.

The more than 400-year-old tree, located in Whitewebbs Park, north London, is believed to have been felled on April 3.

It is situated next to a car park on land leased to Mitchells & Butler, the pub chain owner of the nearby Toby Carvery.

A spokesperson for Mitchells & Butler said the huge tree, which has a girth of 6.1 metres, was cut back after advice it posed a ‘serious health and safety risk’.

The company said in a statement: ‘The tree was cut back after we were advised by our specialist arboriculture contractors that it caused a potential health and safety risk.

‘This was an important action to protect our employees and guests as well as the wider general public, to whom we have a duty of care.

‘We took necessary measures to ensure any legal requirements were met.

‘We are grateful to our specialist arboriculture contractors for warning us of this potential health and safety risk, allowing us to act swiftly to address it.’

Enfield Council members have reported the matter to police and a preservation order remains in place on the base of the stump.

The felling has sparked outrage among locals and environmental campaigners.  

Adam Cormack, The Woodland Trust’s head of campaigning, said: ‘This depressing crime is a reminder to all of us that not every ancient tree is in a safe place.’

Ed Pyne, Woodland Trust senior conservation adviser for trees, added: ‘This is the most shocking fell I think I’ve ever seen in more than a decade working with ancient trees.

‘In my view, this is ecologically much more significant than the Sycamore Gap – and certainly a more irreplaceable tree.’

Local tree surgeon Henry Jordan, 21, who travelled to the park after hearing about the felling, called it a ‘disgrace’. He said: ‘They have absolutely annihilated the oak. When I was younger, I came here with my friends and we used to run about in the woods and this tree was one of the larger ones. ‘It is a disgrace to see it like this. You can tell it was not dying because there is still foliage growing on it.’

Ed Allnut, a local resident and secretary of the Guardians of Whitewebbs group, said: ‘The tree belonged to Enfield and to our national heritage.

‘I am personally devastated. We want answers, and we want guarantees the other trees here are being protected properly.’He added: ‘This was a special tree, there are probably only 100, of its age left in London.’

The tree is thought to have been planted in the 1600s, before the English Civil War. From the English Civil War and the Enlightenment, through the Victorian Empire and two World Wars, it stood. And it was beautiful.

Ed Allnut, a resident of the north London borough and secretary of the Guardians of Whitewebbs group, said local people want justice for the felling.

Dog walker Hayley Pugh, who saw the crew cutting the tree told Metro: ‘There were three blokes with chainsaws and unmarked vans. It’s awful, I’m here every day.

Ergin Erbil, leader of Enfield Council, said they had not been informed about the incident until last week. He said: ‘Enfield Council cares deeply about protecting trees and green spaces in the borough.

‘The council was not informed of this incident until last week. Our teams immediately carried out a full site inspection to assess the damage after receiving reports of the damage done to the tree.

‘We are treating the matter as criminal damage and have reported it to the police. We’ve now placed a legal protection (Tree Preservation Order) on the tree and are looking at ways to help it grow back.’

On Monday, the Tree Council and Forest Research called for a ‘robust and effective system’ to protect England’s most important trees in the wake of the Sycamore Gap tree felling in Northumberland in September 2023.

The trial of the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree is due to take place later this month in Newcastle Crown Court.

Oak trees are valuable for wildlife and biodiversity, and can support more than 2,300 species including birds, bats and insects.

Dog walkers came to pay their respects to the tree, patting it on its bark. One said: ‘I don’t know what this country is coming to.’

A blogpost by the tree company Thores Trees says: “Ancient trees like this one are living ecosystems in themselves. This oak was a lapsed pollard, a sign of historical land management, left to mature over centuries into a vast and unique habitat. Its sheer size and age meant it was home to hundreds of species, many of which rely solely on old trees like this to survive.”

South Cambridgeshire district council plans to bulldoze a precious orchard of 100 year old fruit trees to build  a £230 million ‘green’ electric busway… are at government approval stage.

They will chop down 520 apple, pear & plum trees, including six Bramleys dating back to the 1920s.

The route of the proposed Cambourne to Cambridge (CtoC) bus road,  would cut across the countryside and destroy Coton Orchard.

Unfortunately, despite strong advocacy from experts, leading organisations, and local people, the application for a Transport and Works Act Order for the CtoC scheme has now been submitted. This means the local community now faces a costly public inquiry that will decide whether permission is granted.

The ISSUE

The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) want to build a new road from Cambourne to Cambridge (C2C). The road is only for buses (known as a busway). The proposed route will cut through fields, woodland and an ancient orchard. It will irreversibly damage landscape, views and habitats. It will bring unjustified urbanisation to the village of Coton – and it will cost a minimum of £200 million.

This C2C off-road busway would be a tragedy –

For wildlife and local ecology …

causes significant destruction of scrub, meadow and woodland habitats
desecrates an ancient orchard – where no amount of new planting can compensate for the loss
bisects priority Green Corridors – which are key to ecological recovery
carves up Green Belt land with restrictive covenants in favour of the National Trust

For local heritage and local people …

ruins some of loveliest, most unspoiled views anywhere around Cambridge
encroaches on paths used by walkers
imposes unjustified urbanisation on the rural, historic village of Coton

For taxpayers and commuters …

does not make journey times to Cambridge significantly faster – a difference of only 1.5–3.5 minutes between on-road and off-road routes
does not provide easy journeys to actual destinations apart from the West Cambridge Campus
does not take into account current road usage data or evolving working–commuting patterns
has a minimum price tag of £200 million and a benefit–cost ratio of only 0.43 – so is poor value for taxpayers’ money.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

There is a viable alternative route, along existing transport corridors which:

•   is less damaging to the environment

•   is far less expensive

•   also offers better journeys to actual destinations.

The new bus road has been consistently rejected by the general public at every stage of consultation. And yet the GCP continues to pursue this option, comparing it only to the option of doing almost nothing.

The local community supports improved transport networks around the fast-developing city of Cambridge, but do not accept that this off-road busway is the best or only solution.

They call on the Greater Cambridge Partnership/Cambridgeshire County Council to listen to public opinion, save the green corridor, spare the orchard and find a better solution.

Unique 120-year-old Tree Fern gains international recognition.

A unique tree fern which has been housed in a glasshouse at Birmingham Botanical Gardens for more than a century has been officially recognised by Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, and included in their Plants of the World Online database.

Dicksonia × lathamii is a cross between the Australian tree fern (Dicksonia antarctica) and the elusive Dicksonia arborescens from St. Helena.

The hybrid was created over 120 years ago by William Bradbury Latham, the then curator of Birmingham Botanical Gardens.

Since its creation, this singular specimen has thrived in the Gardens’ glasshouse, standing as a testament to Latham’s pioneering horticultural efforts.

The recent update of Dicksonia × lathamii in the POWO database is a significant milestone in Birmingham Botanical Gardens future capital project plans.

POWO serves as a comprehensive global digital repository of plant names and taxonomy amassed over 250 years. By featuring in the database, the fern is now officially recognised worldwide, allowing researchers and horticulturists globally to acknowledge and reference this unique hybrid.

Alberto Trinco, Senior Glasshouse Horticulturist at Birmingham Botanical Gardens said: “The recognition of Dicksonia × lathamii in Kew’s Plants of the World Online is a significant occasion for us.

“It not only underlines the historical significance of this unique fern but also showcases the enduring legacy of Latham’s botanical expertise here in Birmingham,” he added.

While the hybrid’s existence was acknowledged by fern societies and experts, its official status remained unplaced due to technicalities in botanical nomenclature. The recent update in POWO resolves this, providing clarity and official status for Dicksonia × lathamii.

Harry Smith, Curator-Botanist at Kew’s Herbarium added: “William Latham worked at Kew in the 1850s before moving to Birmingham Botanical Garden during the height of Victorian pteridomania.

“This new specimen joins the original 1885 sheet in our herbarium, preserving the identity of Latham’s unique hybrid and strengthening the links between our institutions’ shared histories of fern expertise,” he added.

Home to over 30,000 plants and 10,000 taxa, including collections within four Victorian glasshouses and stunning outdoor landscapes, Birmingham Botanical Gardens remains a treasured ‘green heart’ of the city, offering a unique haven of natural and historic significance.

https://www.blackcountryradio.co.uk/news/local-headlines/unique-120-year-old-tree-fern-gains-international-recognition/

The image shows the Fanal Forest in Madeira, Portugal, characterized by ancient, moss-covered Ocotea foetens trees, some over 500 years old.

Key features include:
Twisted branches and moss-covered limbs create an unusual landscape.
It is a remnant of laurel forests that once covered Southern Europe.

At Fanal, the main role is undoubtedly played by the centuries-old Til (Ocotea foetens) forest – with trees that date back to a time before the discovery of the archipelago. They are part of the indigenous Laurissilva forest, which expresses itself in an impressive state of conservation given its vitality.

Portuguese settlers arrived after 1420, and are the first known settlers. The islands’ trees were cut for their timber, and Persea indica was the most sought-after. In the 16th and 17th centuries the southern side of Madeira was converted to sugarcane plantations. A system of levadas, water channels 80 to 150 centimetres (31 to 59 in) wide, was constructed of stone and later concrete to irrigate the sugarcane fields. Forests and shrublands were denuded to provide charcoal for the islands’ sugar mills. Goats, sheep, and cows were introduced to the islands, and forests were converted to pasture land, and the forest understory was grazed intensively.

Many exotic plants and animals have been introduced to the islands. A few are invasive. Plantations of Pinus pinaster and Eucalyptus globulus were planted at middle elevations. Eucalyptus has spread extensively on the south slope of Madeira, displacing native species.

The Madeira Islands laurel forest was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999, covering an area of 150 square kilometres (58 sq miles)

With deforestation rising and violence a constant threat, a bold initiative is using satellites to ensure U.S. supermarkets sell ethical, eco-friendly avocados.

Avocados are entrenched in American cuisine. The rich, creamy fruit, swaddled in a coarse skin, is often smashed into guacamole, slathered on toast, or minced into salads.

The nation’s demand for Persea americana has surged by 600 percent since 1998. Most of the avocados consumed in the U.S., and many of those eaten elsewhere in the world, are a single variety grown in Michoacán, a state in west-central Mexico with an immensely profitable export industry worth at least $2 billion annually. But this “green gold rush” has come at a steep climatic cost, as vast tracts of protected land are razed for orchards.

We are losing the forest,” said Alejandro Méndez López, who has been the secretary of environment in Michoacán since 2022. Every year, up to 24,700 acres are illegally cleared for avocado production. “The main contribution of Michoacán for climate change is land-use change. So I think the whole world should be concerned.”

The state government hopes to mitigate that through a certification programme that ensures packinghouses that ship the fruit to international markets are buying sustainably grown avocados. The effort, called Pro-Forest Avocado certification, launched last autumn, and uses satellites to monitor orchards for signs of clear-cutting. Ultimately, the aim is to do away with deals between processors and producers that aren’t adhering to Mexico’s sweeping anti-deforestation law.

That hasn’t gone over well with everyone in a business that has grown so profitable that it’s attracted interest from drug cartels and civilian militias.

Méndez López helped create this programme and is its public face. He has spent the past month meeting with angry avocado growers throughout Michoacán, always in a car outfitted with bulletproof windows and accompanied by police. Despite his attempts to ease their concerns, he says many leave no less irate. Their problem isn’t so much with him, but what his presence represents: the government’s rollout of a programme that is voluntary for packinghouses but leaves growers fearing they have little choice but to comply.

“They were very angry. I was telling them that this certification is not compulsory, but many of them believe that this is a hidden way to tax them,” he said. Given the powerful role cartels play in the avocado business, his efforts to address the industry’s ecological and climatic impact has created no small risk to his safety. Some growers have started anonymously boycotting packinghouses that join, denouncing them as “traitors.” “I don’t want to be killed,” he said. “I’m a bit afraid, because right now we are touching their economic interests.”

Climate activists and analysts say the programme could replicate the market changes seen with other ethical labeling efforts like fair trade coffee and dolphin-free tuna. Locals are more skeptical, and worry that the industry’s history of corruption will undermine progress. And there’s always the question of it receiving the support needed to succeed. But Méndez López believes this is a legitimate solution to a grave issue. Even threats of violence won’t deter the work.

“We have very few resources,” he said. “They can come to my office and put a gun to my head, but they won’t be able to shut down a satellite.”

Nearly a third of the avocados consumed worldwide — more than 2 million metric tons annually — are grown in Michoacán’s “Avocado Belt.” Fertile volcanic soils, elevated terrain, and warm, subtropical microclimates with ample rainfall make it the only region in the world with large-scale production year-round.

Michoacán started moving toward the center of the global avocado trade in 1994 when the North American Free Trade Agreement opened the U.S. to imports from south of the border. By 2007, it was the only Mexican state authorised to send avocados throughout the U.S. This provided consumers with year-round access to the fruit, which further drove demand. Since 2019 alone, avocado exports to the United States have surged 48 percent. (Some 90 percent are the market-dominating Hass variety.)

That explosive growth has brought opportunity to economically disadvantaged areas. Juan Gabriel Pedraza, an Indigenous Purépecha farmer in the town of Sicuicho, told Grist that his people plant orchards even as they strive to protect the forests. He raises roughly 720 avocado trees alongside the pines. The crop “has brought life” to his community, which was once “extremely, extremely poor.”

“We are like guardians of the forest, because if the forest disappears, then it’s going to affect everything else.” “We are always careful with keeping the forest healthy. It’s a duty of ours.”

Over the years, enormous avocado export profits have led to an escalation of violence that has surged alongside demand. Local cartels have bribed agricultural officials and police and extorted or kidnapped growers to maintain a stronghold in the lucrative business, while civilian militias have fought for control of their communities. Avocados are now Michoacán’s, and one of Mexico’s, biggest agricultural exports. This booming industry has triggered widespread violation of a federal law banning clear-cutting without government approval. About 95 percent of the deforestation in Mexico happens illegally.

The problem has since expanded to neighboring Jalisco, the only other Mexican state authorised to ship avocados to the U.S. Some 40,000 to 70,000 acres across the two states were cleared between 1983 and 2023 to grow the fruit destined for American supermarkets, according to a Climate Rights International report. It also found that major U.S. supermarket chains, including Costco, Target, and Walmart, bought from packinghouses whose supply chains included orchards on recently deforested land.

More and more, these forests were disappearing and being transformed into avocado orchards,” said Antonio González-Rodríguez, a forest conservation scientist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Michoacán’s capital city of Morelia.

In 2022, his team estimated that another 100,000 hectares of orchards could be established in Michoacán by 2050 — an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan — of which more than two-thirds would lead to forest loss. That includes protected reserves home to endangered species like the eastern Monarch butterfly. Such a loss would represent “more than 10 percent of the remaining forest,” said González-Rodríguez.

That comes with a staggering planetary cost. Chopping down forests eliminates vital carbon sinks and diminishes an ecosystem’s ability to store carbon. Meanwhile, warming threatens to reduce the amount of land highly suited to avocado cultivation by up to 41 percent worldwide within 25 years.

Clear-cutting also contributes to water scarcity by increasing soil erosion and disrupting natural filtration processes, throwing off the water cycle. Over the course of one decade, deforestation can have the same impact on a community’s access to clean drinking water as a 9 percent decrease in rainfall. This is increasingly an issue as Mexico faces a severe supply crisis.

It doesn’t help that avocado trees need a lot of water and are only getting thirstier as the world warms. Water demand for the crop in Uruapan, Michoacán’s second largest city, rose nearly 24 percent from 2012 to 2017, with orchards drawing 120 percent of the amount allocated to agriculture, creating shortages. Last year, droughts prompted some growers to illegally siphon it from lakes or basins into unlicensed irrigation ponds.

“The expansion of the avocado industry is creating a conflict over water,” González-Rodríguez said. “It’s going to become one of the more serious problems, socially and politically.”

Voluntary certification programmes that rely on public interest in fair and sustainable practices have reshaped consumer purchasing of everything from coffee to tuna. But assessing their impact can be difficult, said Stephanie Feldstein, population and sustainability director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

One fundamental flaw many of these efforts share is a reliance on self-reporting, with little accountability and inadequate follow-up. Those that operate independently of the government often lack regulatory oversight, while others attempt to cover so many products, or so large a geographic area, that they rarely disrupt large industries or markets, she said. Crops associated with widespread deforestation, such as the Cavendish banana, often end up bogged down in too many certification schemes, with multiple retailers requesting several iterations of “sustainable” labels. At worst, these efforts provide little more than greenwashing, and typically at a high cost to producers.

Michoacán’s Pro-Forest programme sidesteps many of those issues by focusing on a single product grown in a specific region and sold primarily to one international market. Its labeling scheme was created by a forest conservation nonprofit working in collaboration with the state government, researchers at local universities, and environmental organisations. It could soon end up boosted by Mexico’s federal government, which on January 30 announced the forthcoming launch of a national programme to eliminate deforestation and water exploitation for agricultural exports. A week later, Michoacán Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla issued anti-deforestation certificates to six packing plants and two orchards that together supply roughly 31 percent of the state’s avocados sold to the U.S.

Orchards qualify for the scheme if they’ve had no deforestation since 2018, no forest fires since 2012, and do not operate on protected land. Government subsidies cover enrollment costs for packinghouses, while growers are charged about $40 for every 2.5 acres for certification. Growers must also pay for the conservation of a forest area to make up for the water consumption of their avocado cultivation. In a “plus” version of the programme, companies commit to prioritising buying from locally certified orchards. (No incentive for this tier exists just yet).

So far, about 10 percent of the state’s packinghouses that send avocados to the U.S. have signed on. That means they’ve agreed to be informed which orchards are complying with the guidelines — and to cease working with those that do not. Packinghouses that continue buying from orchards in violation of the anti-deforestation guidelines lose the ability to certify their avocados as sustainably sourced.

But no one is promising to buy avocados only from orchards bearing the state’s official seal of approval, because there simply aren’t enough of them. As it stands, 937 out of the state’s 53,105 orchards have signed up, a number that changes almost daily, Heriberto Padilla Ibarra told Grist. Ibarra leads Guardian Forestal, the nonprofit overseeing the program’s remote sensing efforts. 

The scant participation may reflect the fact that local producers must pay for certification that packinghouses receive for free. It could also be because growers like Icpac Escalera have little faith in government initiatives. Escalera runs his family’s organic avocado orchard in the town of Acuitzio del Canje. Although he considers the labeling a valiant effort, he says the 2018 date barring deforestation “is not enough.” He also doubts the state has sufficient resources to enforce it, and is worried that it will further disenfranchise smaller producers “without political clout.”

“The political situation hasn’t really helped anything in terms of making sure that deforestation is being properly handled,” Escalera said. “Many politicians have avocado fields. It’s a well-known secret. There are not enough incentives for the smaller producers to maintain the forest, and because of that, the forests are disappearing.”

All the while, global demand for avocados continues to soar. Production in other top exporters like Colombia, Peru, and the Dominican Republic is booming, and breeders are developing new varieties. Even as avocados could overtake pineapples and mangos to become the world’s most traded tropical fruit as early as this year, regulators are stepping in to minimize their environmental and climatic impacts.

The European Union is set to begin implementing “deforestation-free” product regulations in December. The United States took strides in that direction one year ago when several senators urged the Biden administration to address the role the country takes in driving the crisis as a primary market for avocados. Ken Salazar, the former U.S. ambassador to Mexico, announced that avocados grown in illegally cleared orchards should be blocked from the market, before the administration released a policy framework on how to begin doing so for all agricultural imports in December.

President Donald Trump has yet to address the topic. But the impending threat of tariffs on Mexico imply the administration may be interested in doing something about it, if for no reason than to limit overall imports from the country, said James Sayre, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis. “In a way, the Trump administration could end up acting on the deforestation issue,” he said.

Despite the controversial reputation of product labeling, Méndez López remains optimistic about Michoacán’s certification initiative. He hopes to see Mexico and its biggest avocado market federally mandate the need for such schemes. “It would be wonderful if the U.S. had a compulsory [requirement] for the imports of avocado to be deforestation-free. That would be perfect. But, we didn’t get so far [with the Biden administration]. And I don’t know if this new administration will do that,” he said.

For Julio Santoyo Guerrero, an environmental activist in the Michoacán municipality of Madero, the program, while “barely a lifeline” is at least a measure that warns people of the dire ethical and environmental costs linked to every avocado they consume.

“Our biggest cancer is corruption … I believe that the cause that originated the expansion of avocados, the market demand, will be the same thing that can stop it,” said Guerrero. “If the market continues to function without regulation, our forests will continue to be destroyed.”

https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/americas-avocado-obsession-is-destroying-mexicos-forests-is-there-a-fix/