Haiti’s iconic Pine Forest, the country’s first UNESCO-recognized Biosphere Reserve, stands on the brink of total disappearance after decades of unregulated human activity have destroyed nearly 90 percent of its original forest cover, according to a new alarming assessment from Haiti’s leading environmental coalition.
Established as a protected ecological reserve back in 1937, the forest has shrunk dramatically from 40,000 hectares at the start of the 20th century to just 5,000 remaining hectares today, reports the Collective of Ecological Organizations of Haiti (COE-H), an umbrella group uniting six of the nation’s leading environmental advocacy organizations. On-the-ground field surveys conducted by COE-H researchers in early July 2026 confirm that destruction is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, with hundreds of mature pine trees felled illegally in just the past month for commercial timber and charcoal production.
Multiple interconnected human-driven factors are fueling the forest’s rapid decline. Widespread extreme economic insecurity pushes local communities and new arrivals to the region to engage in widespread illegal logging, harvesting trees to sell as structural timber, planks, and charcoal, Haiti’s primary household cooking fuel. A less widely known but equally destructive practice, bark stripping to collect kindling, slowly kills remaining standing trees and leaves them far more vulnerable to being knocked down during annual hurricane season storms. Entire sections of the forest are also cleared via slash-and-burn techniques to make way for small-scale subsistence vegetable crops, while deliberate human-set fires during the dry season are common for clearing land or as acts of vandalism.
The ongoing security crisis centered around the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area has drastically worsened pressure on the reserve. Thousands of people displaced by gang violence and unrest have fled to southeastern Haiti’s municipalities, where they have settled in unplanned settlements within forest boundaries, cleared new land for farming, and turned to logging as a quick source of much-needed income.
The steady destruction of the Pine Forest has triggered cascading, already irreversible environmental consequences for the entire region. With pine tree roots no longer holding topsoil in place, severe erosion has washed away vital nutrients, leaving large swathes of soil sterile and unable to retain moisture. The loss of vegetative cover also amplifies the intensity of flood events and increases the risk of catastrophic landslides during hurricane season, a hazard that has become deadlier as climate change intensifies storm systems. Most critically, deforestation has blocked rainwater infiltration into underground aquifers, drying up natural springs and threatening the entire region’s drinking water reserves.
COE-H’s assessment also warns that the crisis is not isolated: Haiti’s other major protected area, La Visite National Park in the Massif de la Selle, is facing the same pattern of accelerating destruction, with illegal logging, intentional burning, and agricultural expansion steadily eroding forest cover and disrupting critical hydrological ecosystem functions.
If current rates of destruction continue, leading ecological specialists warn the entire Pine Forest could disappear completely well before 2050. This would not only erase one of Haiti’s most important natural ecosystems but also jeopardize the country’s international commitments to biodiversity protection and climate change mitigation.
In response to the escalating emergency, COE-H has issued an urgent appeal to Haitian national authorities, the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Programme, and all national and international development partners to intervene immediately to save the reserve. The organization warns that current policy and conservation responses are woefully insufficient to reverse the decline, noting that “Every tree felled brings Haiti closer to an ecological, water, and climate catastrophe.”
COE-H has put forward four urgent priority recommendations to address the crisis: first, to establish a cross-sector National Emergency Committee bringing together the national government, local authorities, academic institutions, civil society, and environmental organizations to conduct a full independent assessment of the reserve’s current condition and design a new inclusive governance framework; second, to immediately deploy a permanent, fully funded monitoring and protection system including dedicated forest rangers and anti-illegal logging control mechanisms across the entire Pine Forest; third, to develop an emergency national land-use plan under the leadership of the Inter-ministerial Committee for Territorial Development (CIAT) that provides sustainable livelihood and housing solutions for displaced populations while reducing pressure on protected forest areas; and fourth, to mobilize immediate national and international funding to support degraded ecosystem restoration, protect critical water sources, provide alternative livelihoods for local communities, and launch a large-scale reforestation program.
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