Assistant Professor Tanya Hayes focuses research on property rights, conservation and forest management
Tanya Hayes teaches environmental studies in Arts and Sciences.
Chris Joseph Taylor
The genesis of Tanya Hayes’
journey to Río Plátano,
Honduras, can be traced to
the heartland of America:
Bloomington, Ind. It was there, at
Indiana University, while enrolled in
a joint PhD program with the School
of Public and Environmental Affairs
and Political Science, that she was
mentored by Dr. Elinor Ostrom,
Nobel Prize winner in economics.
Under the tutelage of Ostrom,
Hayes became particularly
interested in community
management of forests
and agricultural lands.
When she was looking for
a project for her master’s
thesis, she learned about
agricultural expansion—
deforestation caused by
the migration of farmers
and ranchers—in Río
Plátano, a remote region
of Honduras.
“My thesis looked at
why colonists [farmers and
ranchers] were moving to
the region and the impact
that various land-use and
conservation policies had
on supporting or thwarting
this immigration,” says
Hayes, an assistant professor
of environmental
studies in the College of
Arts and Sciences.
After completing her master’s,
Hayes expanded her research for her
doctoral dissertation. “I began to look
at property rights and management
policies in Río Plátano and compared
these to property rights and policies for
forest management in a neighboring
reserve, Bosawas, Nicaragua,” she says.
In contrast to Río Plátano, where
the Honduran Ministry of Forestry
held all land rights and management
rights to the reserve, in Bosawas the
indigenous residents went through a
long participatory planning process
by which they eventually obtained the
communal title to their territories in
the reserve and the sole right to make
management decisions regarding
forest and land use.
“My investigation looked at if
these different management processes
and policies made a difference in
controlling agricultural expansion and
how they impacted local governance
by the indigenous residents,” she says.
Hayes began the study in 2001 and
finished the project in 2007. Her primary
findings show that the indigenous
residents who hold communal tenure
in Bosawas are better able to control
agricultural expansion and prevent
deforestation than the indigenous
residents who live in a governmentmanaged
reserve at Río Plátano.
One of the biggest challenges to the
research was accessibility. To reach
Río Plátano, she had to first board
a small plane and then complete the
second leg of the journey by dugout
canoe.
Hayes plans to continue conducting
applied research and incorporating the
lessons learned into the classroom.
She is currently involved in a research
project with a set of NGOs in Colombia
that looks at conservation of forests
on the lands of poor peasant farmers in
the East Andes.
—Chelan David