The recently created Institute of Forest Conservation (ICF), entrusted with executing and supervising the application of the new Forestry Act in Honduras, is taking form following the arrival of its new director, Suyapa Otero. Her challenge is to fight illegal logging and to define a public policy of environmental conservation.

The application of the law will not only change the traditional relations between the government and the logging sector, but will also give communities a place for participation in forestry management and conservation, “under a model of sustainable development,” Otero said in a Tierramérica interview.

Otero was sworn in while a march of environmentalists from the central department of Olancho, led by Catholic priest Andrés Tamayo, headed to Tegucigalpa to demand an end to illegal logging, the depoliticizing of the ICF and clear rules for community participation.