AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Belize Life News Honduras Airports Closed Due to Smoke

From the "It Could Be Worse" department:

I see reports that major airports in Honduras have been closed for days, due to smoke from forest fires and from milpa fires.

The airport at Tegucigalpa has been closed since around April 20. Airports at La Ceiba and elsewhere also have been closed, and even the Roatan airport in the Bay Islands offshore was closed for a time.

A brown cloud of smoke nearly 10,000 feet high from hundreds of fires covers much of Honduras.

--Lan Sluder

Its not going to get better any time soon if this drought continues.
www.sacred-texts.com/bud/bear.htm

Happens this time every year while all of Cent. America is on fire burning milpa for rice, beans and McDonald hamburgers. Visibility is only a few miles. Was in the Mtn Pine Ridge and Baldy Beacon with a ceiling of smoke from our forest fires. Took 1.5 weeks to contain a small hillside fire. Heard 3-4 jaguar volcalizing to one another because their territories are threatened and they have to roam, one only a few hundred yards away. Kept the dogs inside at night. Will get worse, especially with May lightening before rainy season commences.

Forgive my ignorance......what exactly are they burning? I have always been under the impression that "milpa" was a sustainable method of slash & burn farming - cultivate for two years, dormant & rebuilding for 6 or 8 (as practiced by the Maya in Quintana Roo). Usually with crops of maize, beans or squash.