Information Resource Center - Amador Washington

Panamanian Group Works To Protect Canal Watershed

FUDIS uses USAID grant to promote sustainable ranching practices

By David Shelby
USINFO Staff Writer

Los Playones, Panama – It takes more than 190 million liters of fresh water to float a single ship through the Panama Canal’s locks.  With more than 14,000 ships crossing the canal each year, that adds up to more than 2,660 billion liters of water discharged annually.

This water is vital to Panama’s economy.  The canal draws in more than $1 billion in tolls each year, accounting for 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, and it supports related industries such as trade, banking, insurance and maritime services.

But, as population pressures build up along the sides of the canal, its watershed is threatened.  Approximately 40 percent of the water flowing through the canal comes from the Rio Chagres and its tributaries, but the growth of cattle ranching in the Chagres river basin has decimated much of the rain forest that historically absorbed water during the rainy season and steadily discharged it into the river and the canal during the dry season.

As ranchers strip trees from the land and as cows graze on the available vegetation, the water drains faster, the soil is exposed to erosion, and silt washes into the river and the canal, lowering the canal’s capacity to store water.  Artificial fertilizers and animal waste also pollute the streams, threatening valuable fisheries and drinking water resources.

Panama’s Foundation for Sustainable Integrated Development (FUDIS) set out to address these problems in 2005 and 2006 with a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  The foundation selected two dozen ranchers along the Rio Gatuncillo, one of the Chagres’s many tributaries, and trained them in environmentally sustainable ranching practices.

FUDIS’s first challenge was to organize the ranchers into a cooperative association to implement the new practices.  Rancher Carmen Soto de Garibaldi told USINFO July 11 that the local producers were skeptical of FUDIS’s proposals at first, having had negative experiences with nongovernmental organizations in the past.  But the FUDIS representatives took them to visit ranches where sustainable practices were in use, and the ranchers agreed to give the plan a try.

Under the guidance of FUDIS, the producers’ association established a central nursery to grow plants and trees for use on the ranches and to convert cow manure into organic fertilizer.  The association also produces high-protein food supplements for the livestock to be used during the dry season. 

Soto said the ranchers previously let their cattle graze on whatever was available, but they have come to understand that cattle, like people, need clean, healthy food to grow and thrive.  FUDIS introduced a new pasture grass on the ranches that is higher in protein than the native grass and has the added benefit of being more robust.  It produces a denser ground cover and continues to grow throughout the dry season, providing a reliable food source, reducing soil erosion and virtually eliminating the need to clear the pasture of weeds.

FUDIS advised the ranchers to plant trees in their pastures to provide their animals shade, hold water in the soil and protect the soil from erosion.  The trees also provide a natural habitat for birds and other wildlife.  FUDIS introduced live fence posts as well.   By using small fruit trees instead of dead stakes as fence posts, the ranchers protect the soil from erosion and create an additional food source for the livestock.

In the past, the cattle were free to wander to the river for water.  This created erosion along the river bank and polluted the stream with animal waste.  FUDIS’s solution to this problem was to build drinking tanks in the pastures and fence off access to the river.  Rancher Raquel Santana Rodriguez said the fence is not even really necessary.  Given the choice, her cattle prefer the drinking tank’s easy access rather than the steep climb down the river bank.

The new ranching practices protect the soil from erosion, limit water pollution and help stabilize the Chagres and Panama Canal watershed, but the key question for the ranchers was whether the practices make economic sense.  According to Santana, they do.  The big difference, she said, is that her animals are not hungry.  Her cattle are fatter and healthier than ever before, which means they fetch higher prices.

Whereas it used to take Santana three weeks to clean the weeds out of a sun-parched pasture, the robust new grass keeps the weeds down, and she now can clean a pasture in two days.  And, because the new pasture grass grows year round, she does not have to gather additional grass to keep the cows fed during the dry summer months.  All of this saves her time and effort.

FUDIS hopes that the ranchers along the Gatuncillo will disseminate their knowledge about environmentally sustainable practices to other ranchers in the region so that the land can benefit the residents economically without threatening the canal’s vital watershed.  USAID is also funding additional sustainable ranching programs to ensure that the practices take hold throughout the country.