When residents in the village of Houeyogbe agreed to let the government destroy much of its forest to build roads and install electricity, locals say the spirits unleashed a plague, with inexplicable deaths and mounting illnesses.

Today, millions of people practice it, turning to Voodoo priests to perform rituals to ward off evil spirits, overcome illness and achieve professional and personal success.

“It all points back to the idea that we don’t live in a world where the only actors are the human ones,” said Danny Hoffman, a cultural anthropologist who is director of the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

The aid group tries to preserve sacred forests by working with communities to demarcate boundaries, raise awareness about cutting trees and teach people how to financially benefit through honey harvesting or snail farming.

Urbanization and desertification shrank the forests, but the biggest factor was agricultural expansion driven by poverty, said Bienvenu Bossou, the group’s executive director.

Benin’s economy depends on agriculture exports, notably cotton and cashew nuts, and Bossou says many people — unable to afford fertilizer — expanded their farms into the forest to use its rich soil.

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