List and describe environmental threats to your home biome caused by human disturbance. What are they? What cause it? Where are they the worst? How do they impact the environment? (Biotic or abiotic)

Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve

The Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve is 5,250 km² of preserved land in the La Mosquitia region on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Most of the land runs along the Río Plátano. The reserve has a number of endangered species and some of Honduras largest sections of forest. It has been a World Heritage site and biosphere reserve since 1982. The reserve is part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor that stretches from Mexico southwards trough Central America. 

Currently there are threats to the conservation of the reserve which include illegal hunting, logging and clearing of land to graze cattle. Recent rafting expeditions from the Rio Platano headwaters through all three zones of the reserve (cultural, buffer and core) have documented cattle grazing in the core zone, commercial fishing and hunting camps along the river and clear cutting of forest near Las Marias.

The reserve is home for more than 2,000 indigenous people and a growing number of migrant inhabitants.  The population includes four very different and unique cultural groups: Miskito, Pech, Garifunas, and the ladino. The smaller groups, the Pech, Garifunas, and Miskito inhabitants live mostly in the north, alongside the river. These people have a variety of rights to the land and mostly use the land for agriculture. The smaller-scale agriculture of the Pech is easily made sustainable. Many of the largest group, the ladino, entered the reserve from the south.  Conflict over land rights is a prominent source of conflict between ethnic groups. Current conflict over land rights involve non native peoples invading and threatening indigenous land owners forcing them from their historical lands.

In my own personal opinion this is affection the biotic and abiotic organisms located in this region. Why? Because people living in there using the land for agricultural purpose, and they are using pesticides and herbicides, those are causing such harm to the soil, water and also the animals that are living and eating in this environment which is their habitat.

The most worse I think is the illegal hunting the animals that live in this habitat. Those animals like the deer are starting to disappear and that is not good, because those animals are the beauty of the Rio Platano Biosphere reserve. And not just that people is logging the forest to make money or people use it to prepare their meals.

But the good news is that the reserve’s conservation plan also aims to integrate local inhabitants into their environment via sustainable agricultural practices. Indigenous populations play a large part into the success of the conservation plan, both inside the reservation and outside the reservation in the buffer zones. 

Wikipedia.2013. Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve. [Internet][3/15/14]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%ADo_Pl%C3%A1tano_Biosphere_Reserve