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Weather Channel Anchor Outrageously Claims Hungry Haitian Children are Eating all the Trees

On Monday, Oct. 3, during a Hurricane Matthew forecast, Weather Channel meteorologist Jen Delgado claims Haitian children eat trees and implies that it led to the rampant deforestation in Haiti.

She also compares the rich green space of the Dominican Republic to Haiti’s while trying to make her point.

“… This whole area has been essentially deforested,” she explains. “They take all the trees down. They burn the trees. Even the kids there, they’re so hungry, they actually eat the trees.”

However, Twitter users did not like Delgado’s statements. Many of them thought she was uninformed and offensive for making such claims.

User The DRoweshow says the meteorologist should stop spreading misinformation.

https://twitter.com/theDRoweshow/status/783157571670667264

But user ChangingHaiti took the moment to add some snarky commentary.

ChangingHaiti ponders how Delgado was hired in the first place.

While Twitter users tried to educate Delgado, a Stanford University case study by Nathan McClintock can certainly finish the job. According to McClintock, Haiti has suffered from centuries of “agricultural exploitation under the colonial plantation system.” This exploitation has caused the current soil erosion and deforestation epidemic. In addition, consistent monocropping of cotton, indigo, tobacco, sugarcane and coffee have depleted the land to its current state. McClintock does not attribute hunger to Haiti’s deforestation.

Since the backlash, Weather Channel CEO David Clark apologized to those offended.

“We are terribly sorry for an on air error and are taking measures to correct it,” Clark wrote. “It should not have happened period.”

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