Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve straddles the country’s border with Honduras and was declared a UNESCO site in 1997. It comprises one of the largest contiguous rainforest regions in Latin America north of the Amazon Basin and includes 21 ecosystems and six types of forest that are home to a multitude of species, several of which are threatened with extinction.

According to a report by the Nicaraguan environmental agency MARENA, a little more than 15 percent of the Bosawás reserve had been cleared and converted for agricultural use in 2000. But today, that number stands at nearly 31 percent. Satellite data show deforestation reached the heart of the reserve’s core zone earlier this year.

Deforestation in Bosawás stems mainly from migration, as people in other parts of the country move to the region looking for fertile land and space to raise cattle and grow crops.

Indigenous communities are allowed to own land within Bosawás. But sources say land traffickers are selling plots of land to non-indigenous farmers and ranchers, creating conflicts that have caused death on both sides.

Torrential rain creates a deafening roar as it strikes the metal roof of community leader Ubence Zelaya’s two-bedroom home on the southern border of the Mayagna indigenous territory. Zelaya lives in the community of Wisoh alongside the Bocay River within the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve in northern Nicaragua. Outside his open door, a mountainous green landscape disappears behind a solid wall of water.

“I was born and created on this river,” Zelaya told Mongabay as the rains die down. “My mother, my father, my grandfather, my grandmother, here they were born and here they died. [The Mayagna] are the owners of everything you see here, of this we are created, and we are the owners.”

Zelaya’s eyes fill with tears as he explained the dire situation facing his community and his people. “The Mayagna have a tradition of protecting the reserve, the forests and the animals. Today, the mestizos have come bringing different traditions. They negotiate the land, the reserve, and they cut down the forests to make pastures and raise cattle.”

Mestizo is a Spanish term for people who form the ethnic majority population of Nicaragua and other Latin American countries, who speak Spanish, and do not ascribe to a particular Indigenous culture or tribe. In Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, the non-indigenous mestizo settlers are expanding into the Bosawás reserve’s core zone, settling ancestral lands that the Nicaraguan government has recognized as collective territory titled to the Mayagna and Miskito people.

Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve sits within the Mosquitia region that straddles the border of Honduras with Nicaragua, comprising one of the largest contiguous rainforest regions in Latin America north of the Amazon Basin. Bosawás, covering some 2.2 million hectares (4.4 million acres), is part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that ensures the free movement of wildlife between Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Mexico.

Nicaragua holds about one-quarter of Central America’s remaining forest cover. Since the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve covers around 14 percent of Nicaragua’s land area, it holds a large amount of valuable habitat for the region’s widlife. Comprising 21 ecosystems and six types of forest, the reserve is home to 370 plant, 215 bird, 85 mammal, 15 snake, 11 fish, and 200,000 insect species. Several of these species are already threatened with extinction, such as Baird’s tapir (Tapirus bairdii) and Geoffroy’s spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi), which are listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List.

‘They’re coming after me next’

The reserve, declared a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1997, is made up of two parts: a buffer and core zone. The buffer zone is intended to act as a containment area where regulated human activities could occur in an effort to limit impacts on the core zone, and for decades has been settled by small-scale farmers and cattle ranchers who have converted the forests to grow annual food staples such as corn, rice and beans, as well as raise livestock.

According to a report by the Nicaraguan environmental agency MARENA, a little more than 15 percent of the Bosawás reserve had been cleared and converted for agricultural use in 2000. But today, that number stands at nearly 31 percent.

Deforestation in Bosawás stems mainly from migration, as people in other parts of the country move to the region looking for fertile land and space to raise cattle and grow crops. And this pressure is no longer relegated to the buffer zone. Zelaya told Mongabay that in 2018, colonists have started to extend roads and buy up land within the reserve’s core zone where the Mayagna indigenous people have lived for thousands of years. One of these new developments is an informal road that follows the Bocay River from the town of Ayapal into the reserve’s core.

The forest isn’t the only victim of this expansion. Zelaya claims that 11 indigenous people have been murdered at the hands of the colonists since 2011. Last month, he said the colonists killed one of his townspeople, and that the colonists “are celebrating the month anniversary, saying that the killing was a triumph for them.”

“The threats continue, I can no longer live here because I’ve been told that they’re coming after me next,” he said. “These people know the military has authority here. If they were to tell them to leave, they would go.”

Zelaya said that the Mayagna have not been able to speak directly with the government about the problems that have arisen due to the colonists penetrating the reserve. “Why doesn’t [the government] talk to us? Is it because they don’t see us as human beings? I don’t know.”

Jesus Demasio is on the governing board of the Bosawás Territorial Indigenous Government comprised of both Mayagna and Miskito ethnic groups. Even though the Mayagna’s collective lands cannot legally be sold by any single person, even a member of an indigenous group to whom the land is titled, Demasio explained that land traffickers still sold plots of land to non-indigenous farmers and ranchers, creating conflicts that have caused death on both sides.

“The land conflicts have created personal conflicts with threats and killings of indigenous and non-indigenous people within the reserve,” Demasio said. “A man from the indigenous community began selling lands to the colonists, but now the colonists don’t want to leave unless their money is returned.”

Demasio suggested that the government should determine how many colonists have illegally settled in Mayagna ancestral territory, and then persuade them to leave peacefully by offering compensation for the money they spent for the land.

Vanishing resources

Mayagna community member Rioberto Delgado lives further north along the Bocay River in the Samaska community near the border with Honduras.

“The communal living system of the indigenous communities is disappearing. The animals we used to hunt, the fish we used to take from the river, they’re all going away, they’re disappearing,” Delgado said. “With the colonists, another system is replacing ours and the indigenous are suffering. Our system requires lots of land, fish, animals, the ability to work calmly without [agricultural] chemicals.”

The Mayagna people were officially recognized by Nicaragua’s state constitution in the late 1980s. Delgado said that even though the government officially granted land titles to indigenous communities in Bosawás, the laws protecting those titles have not been effectively implemented or enforced.

Delgado said that municipal and regional governments are interfering with indigenous laws, and promoting road construction, colonization and development that is pushing the agricultural frontier further into the reserve. This, he said, is increasing deforestation and land conflicts between the indigenous communities and the colonists.

Zelaya said the Mayagna lack access to the authorities, who have allegedly done little to stop the colonists from illegally settling on indigenous lands. “The government, who has the police, the army, the authorities behind them, needs to put a hand on their chests and make a concerted decision to stop the invasions.”

With every passing year, deforestation within the core zone is increasing. Delgado said that a 2016 survey counted 21 non-indigenous families situated within the Mayagna territory, but that the problem has become more acute since then.

“There could be 100 families or there could 500, I don’t know. Our reserve is in agony, we are not free, many lives are threatened,” Delgado said. “Some of the lands were taken over without anyone’s permission and others were sold, illegally.”