Logging is underway in the Columbia River Forest Reserve in southern Belize, and the Internet is running hot with angry denouncements.
The controversy began two years ago when the Belize government turned over a big block of rainforest to a Malaysian owned logging company. Outraged environmentalists claimed that the ministers gave away a priceless resource, a credible argument in a country increasingly dependent on ecotourism. The concession was for 24,000 acres, sizeable real estate in a country smaller than New Hampshire.
The Ministry of Natural Resources responded to the criticism by getting international assistance to develop a modern forest- management plan for the Columbia River Management Unit, near the Guatemalan border. The government is touting the plan as a model of sustainable forest use, and sawyers are felling grand mahogany trees and two dozen other species of lustrous and valuable hardwoods.
According to the forestry section of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the concession given to Malaysian-backed Toledo Atlantic International Limited will be selectively logged, opening small blocks of forest each year and letting cut-over areas recover. The government emphasizes that the permit covers only 18 percent of the Columbia River Forest Reserve, and that the majority of the area will remain under protected status.
Environmentalists are not convinced, and people living near the reserve are mounting opposition. "Our main concern is that the management plan was never endorsed by the local people," says Valdemar Andrade, with Belize Audubon Society, a leading environmental group.
The "local people" in this case are the Kekchi, Mopan and others of Mayan descent who depend on the forest, as well as the Garifuna of Caribbean ancestry, who live on the seacoast. "The forest plan itself is okay, but it will never work without local support," Andrade asserts, repeating a global truism in forest conservation.
Environmentalists who have scouted the site say that the loggers are already violating the rules of the management plan, taking more trees than allowed and busting into restricted areas. The government admits that, with only four forestry inspectors in southern Belize, it is unable to enforce the regulations.
A forest department official who asked not to be identified said that some critics were fanning the controversy in order to promote other agendas, such as opening more land to farming. The population of Belize is booming, and the flow of refugees from Guatemala is swelling border towns.
But Will Maheia of the Belize Center for Environmental Studies retorts that the government is using the Columbia River controversy as a smokescreen to divert attention from a massive giveaway of national lands in southern Belize. At least 16 other concessions have been granted to timber companies, and none have management plans.
Maheia fears that the government is "using the Columbia River site as a showpiece while indiscriminate logging goes on everywhere else." With no regulations, Maheia says, the logging companies could clearcut and replace the forest with monocultures such as citrus or oil palms.
Contacts: Belize Audubon Society, PO Box 1001, Belize City, 501- 2/77369 (tel), 501-2/34985 (fax); Will Maheia, BCES, PO Box 666, Belize City, 501-2/45545; pgwil@btl.net; Ministry of Natural Resources, Belmopan, 501-8/22082.
This article is provided from the Rainforest Alliance's Tropical Conservation Newsbureau, based in San Jose,Costa Rica. For more information, contact Diane Jukofsky or Chris Wille, Rainforest Alliance, Apdo. 138-2150, Moravia, San Jose, Costa Rica; Phone: 506-240-9383; Fax: 506-240-2543; Email: infotrop@sol.racsa.co.cr
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