Belize and northern Guatemala, although having very different recent histories, face some similar environmental threats. Belize has always been at peace, but Guatemala just recently emerged from almost 40 years of serious civil strife. Belize has a small population; Guatemala's is fairly large. But both are poor, developing countries with low per capita gross domestic products (1994: Belize, US$2750; Guatemala, $3080). In both, a small number of well-off citizens, together with large corporations, own most of the available land. Guatemala's large population has affected both countries because during the civil war, many thousands of Guatemalans crossed the border to seek refuge in Belize; some became permanent immigrants.
Most would agree that, so far, given the nation's general lack of funds, Belize's conservation record is OK. More than a third (about 36%) of Belize is under environmental protection of one kind or another - parks, wildlife sanctuaries, nature reserves. However, the government has very little money to manage these lands or enforce environmental regulations there or elsewhere. Often one underpaid warden in a park or reserve is single-handedly responsible for enforcement over an enormous area. The result is that rules are widely flouted. For example, one important but usually ignored rule is that new farms and orchards carved out of forests should leave standing a belt of about 20 meters (65 ft) of forest along all waterways. Cutting the forest right up to rivers and streams impedes animal movements, takes needed shade from the water, and allows agricultural pesticides to move directly into waterways.
Furthermore, although the attitude of the Belize government toward conservation is good, the attitude of most Belizeans is only so-so. The commonly voiced explanation is that people of limited means necessarily must worry more about today - obtaining food and shelter for their families - than about the country's or the world's future environmental state. Most care about conservation only when they can benefit economically from it, when it can make their lives better. But so far, such as in the case of conservation by ecotourism, only a small number of local people benefit and most of the profit "leaks" out of Belize, mostly flowing to North America and Europe (to tour operators and hotel owners). Even the best examples in Belize between ecotourism and local community participation - the Community Baboon Sanctuary and Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary - often provide only meager incomes to participating villagers. The picture is slowly improving. The government now maintains a social investment fund (accumulated partly by the airport departure tax) to give grants and loans to people trying to improve their lives, for example, by building up their stakes in ecotourism by developing or upgrading tourist facilities. In the past, most of the committed environmentalists that controlled local conservation organizations and lobbied for environmental protections were resort owners and the like, well-off people who stood to profit greatly from increased tourism (and, as often as not, were North American and European expatriots). Now, with increasing frequency, native-born Belizeans in various professions understand the need for conservation and are sitting on the executive boards of these organizations.
Conservation Programs and Ecotourism. The outstanding feature of conservation in Belize is the success private organizations have had in developing and implementing programs. The government simply has no money for such projects, but private, mostly non-profit conservation organizations do, and they are very interested in working in Belize - a peaceful country with a stable government and with substantial remaining unspoiled habitats. Many of the organizations have already been mentioned in Chapter 2. The Belize Audubon Society has been instrumental in developing and managing many of Belize's parks and wildlife sanctuaries. The Community Baboon Sanctuary and Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary are organizations that preserve large tracts of important habitats not far from Belize City. A Swiss foundation established the Shipstern Nature Reserve. Several organizations, some for-profit, some non-profit, promote ecotravel to Belize. The Program for Belize, among other projects, manages the Rio Bravo Conservation Area, works with researchers and local people to develop a sustainable mahogany logging industry, and hosts travellers at its field station. Chan Chich Lodge, a favorite birdwatching destination, preserves the Mayan ruin site in which it is located. International Zoological Expeditions (IZE), through its Blue Creek field station, attracts ecotourists to southern Belize, and employs local villagers. Coral Cay Conservation Ltd, a British-based organization interested in conservation in coastal communities in developing nations, brings groups of paying volunteers to Belize's cayes (especially South Water Caye) to learn about and gather data on marine biology in general, and the coral reef in particular (Coral Cay Conservation, 154 Clapham Park Rd, London, SW4 7DE, UK; phone: 44 (0) 171-498-6248; email: ccc@coralcay.demon.co.uk)
Ecotourism in Belize expanded rapidly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Most people came to visit the cayes for diving and snorkelling, but the number of people visiting mainland rainforests also increased. A good example is the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. There were 25 visitors to the site in 1986, 558 in 1987, 1055 in 1988, 1529 in 1989, and about 2500 in 1990 and subsequent years. Of course, too much of a good thing - too many ecotravellers - can be bad. Belize's barrier reef, for instance, the country's biggest tourist draw, is experiencing some damage from over-use. The reef at Hol Chan Marine Reserve, where most diving occurs, is slightly damaged every time people touch it or stand on it. To counter such damage, and to try to disperse divers over a larger area of reef, Belize has established other marine reserves, such as the one at Glover's Reef. But that strategy, too, has problems. As tour and resort operators move quickly to capitalize on the burst of interest in offshore islands other than Ambergris Caye and Caye Caulker, rapid and unrestricted development occurs on more and more of the cayes. In one famous case, a foreign resort owner used explosives to blast holes in the reef so that his guests could have better access to other islands. (The barrier reef is not the only part of Belize's coastal ecology to be threatened: there is coastal erosion, land-based pollution, poorly-plannned jetty construction, and unregulated fishing and other harvesting of seafoods.)
Still, even with its many problems and lack of funds to address them, Belize is considered to be among the planet's most environmentally concerned countries. Belizeans have seen what uncontrolled development has done to their closest neighbors - the near total deforestation that occured over broad swaths of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras - and they do not want the same for their small, green nation. They made a good start by giving preservation status to large chunks of the country. Ecotourism is strongly and officially encouraged. Because tourism is the fastest growing sector of the Belizean economy, local people should increasingly see the benefits of preserving pristine habitats.
An exciting plan that many local conservationists are working on is to be able to link up existing preserves so that there is a continuous belt of highly protected, wild, green habitat running through Belize. Such a green corridor, or greenway, would provide a permanent path for movement of land animals (for their migrations and dispersals) that often are blocked or inhibited by roads, farms, and human settlements. Among such large reserves as Rio Bravo Conservation Area and the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Belize's North, and Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary and Bladen Branch Nature Reserve in the South, much of the corridor already exists. What is needed is to acquire some critical connecting pieces of land or obtain the owners' legal promises (easements) never to develop those parcels. When the corridor is in place, it can become part of the Paseo Pantera (Path of the Panther), the in-progress green corridor being put together by all of Central America to provide and forever preserve a continuous band of wild habitat from Mexico to Colombia. (The Maya Biosphere Reserve, in northern Guatemala, would also be part of the corridor.)
Belize also plans to create more land reserves - the future Siwa-ban reserve on Caye Caulker, for example - and, in all probability, more marine reserves. Belizeans have more than 65% of their rainforest habitat remaining and many residents want to keep it that way. They recently (1996) completed a detailed master conservation plan for the country. Conservation-minded citizens are working for more and better enforcement of existing enviromental laws. They are trying to involve more local people in conservation via education programs (for instance, an anti-litter campaign has helped reduce litter) and via increased local participation in ecotourism. Ultimately, it will be better education and an increased standard of living that will instill the conservation ethic. So let's say that Belize has made a good conservation start. Because it still has some relatively undisturbed habitats and good wildlife, and because it has the advantage of being able to evaluate recent development and conservation efforts of neighboring countries, Belize, with some motivation, help, and luck, has the chance to learn from others' mistakes and to do things better - to develop economically while still keeping its environmental house in good shape.
History of the Peten. The main bit of the Peten's history relative to its current environmental and conservation status is that, as the result of a number of inter-related factors, the Peten contains Guatemala's and, indeed, the region's, largest remaining area of forest habitat - the largest stand of continuous virgin tropical rainforest north of the Amazon. In fact, the Peten holds what are essentially Guatemala's last pristine habitats. The Pacific coastal lowland forests have been mostly cleared for agriculture, and the central highlands are everywhere (except for the highest-elevation mountainous regions) dotted with small villages and their associated pastures and croplands. Until about 1970, about 90% of the Peten, a vast area, was still covered with undisturbed rainforest. The reasons? First, it was a difficult place for people to live because much of the region is hot and steamy and there was little surface water available over wide swaths of the Peten (especially the northern half) during much of the year. Also, the region's soils generally are less-than-ideal for farming and there was little water to support extensive agriculture. With few people living there and, consequently, a low economic productivity, the Guatemalan government never had much reason to build or improve roads in the Peten; the lack of easy road access further inhibited people from moving there. To be sure, there was some use of the Peten's forests, but the main industries that developed (mainly extracting chicle, xate, and allspice from trees - see below) did little harm. Finally, for a major portion of the almost 40 years of civil war, the Peten was a dangerous place to live. The Sayaxche area, for instance, where travellers now routinely visit the Ceibal Archaeological Park, was a particularly dangerous spot, where rebel guerillas held sway. (So, in an ironic way, Guatemala's civil war helped preserve its forests, but the war also had catastrophic effects on the country: More than 100,000 people were killed, and a government at war necessarily spent little money on educational and cultural programs, road-building, health care, or conservation.)
As a result of the Peten's unique history, through about 1970, the region's population was fairly low and stable - about 60,000 people lived there. But during the following 25 years, the Peten's population increased six-fold, to about 350,000 in 1997; and the projections are for a population of at least 400,000 by 2000 (if not many more - the region's growth rate in the mid-1990's approached 10% per year). The main reasons have to do with poverty, high population growth, and limited arable land in other parts of Guatemala, and the ending of the war. The Peten somehow acquired a reputation as a region where land could still be had for the asking, where crowding was nonexistent, and where, owing to increasing development, jobs were available. Roads put in during the 1970s and 1980s, as the government sought to profit from the area by opening it to oil exploration and logging, permitted easy immigration. With the increased safety in movement associated with the winding down of the war, people began to move to the Peten from Guatemala's other districts. Further, when the war ended and Guatemalan refugees from abroad - particularly those that fled to Mexico and Belize - returned home and had to be resettled, the Peten, with its large expanse of state-owned, undeveloped lands, was a logical place to look.
Major threats. The major environmental threat to the Peten is its rapid human population growth, and the pressure that growth puts on its forests; in other words, deforestation. When new people arrive, they clear land for homes, farms, and cattle pastures. Moreover, the operation of almost any industry - timber, agriculture, oil, factories - results in cleared or spoiled forest land, and causes pollution. Conservation organizations estimate that since 1970, about half of the Peten's virgin forest has been cut, burned, or otherwise destroyed, and that at the current rate of loss - about 300 square km (120 square miles) per year - it will all be gone by 2025. A secondary environmental threat, clearly related to the increased human population, is hunting. Soils are poor for farming, so for many poor people - most of the population - hunting and fishing are main food sources. Many game animals, including especially deer, Paca (tepezcuintle), and large birds such as Ocellated Turkey, are quickly disappearing over wide areas. Poaching is common in protected areas, even within Tikal National Park.
Conservation Programs and Ecotourism. All is not lost. Because of the unique nature of the Peten's forests, there is a huge amount of interest among the international conservation community in taking steps to preserve as much as possible of what remains. With the relative safety provided by the long cease-fire between government and rebel forces that was in effect through much of the early 1990s, conservation organizations moved into the Peten to assess the situation, make plans, and begin to implement those plans. With the official ending of the Guatemala's civil war at very end of 1996, foreign governments - the USA, Europe, Japan - were posied to pour funds into Guatemala for national reconstruction, including conservation.
The major ongoing conservation effort in the Peten is the establishment and development of the Maya Biosphere Reserve. CONAP (Consejo Nacional de Areas Protegidas), Guatemala's National Council of Protected Areas, together with what is becoming an army of international conservation organizations, is working to preserve in pristine condition the most remote, unspoiled wilderness areas of the Peten, while working with local people to teach and encourage sustainable, ecologically sensitive yet economically profitable, use of other sections of the Peten. (Sustainable means using plants and animals in ways that are economically profitable for the local economy yet not ecologically harmful; the use, in other words, will not lead to significant ecosystem damage or to decline in biodiversity.)
The plan is simple - on paper. The Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR), at about 1.6 million hectares (4 million acres), includes about 40% of the Peten (Map 3). It is divided into three zones that have varying degrees of environmental protection. Core Zone areas (784,000 hectares, or 1.9 million acres) are set aside for absolute protection of biodiversity. No human settlements are allowed, and only research and ecotourism are permitted. The core areas are the national parks and nature reserves (biotopos) located within the MBR. The Multiple Use Zone consists of sparesly-settled areas that surround the core zone areas. Some oil and timber industry is allowed, as is sustainable use of forest resources by local people. The Buffer Zone is a 15-km (9 mile) wide band of land that separates the MBR from the southern part of the Peten, and in which all kinds of industrial and agricultural practices are allowed. If the buffer and multiple-use zones serve their intended purpose, then the core areas should remain pristine. The plan's success, of course, depends on local education and participation, and money being made available for education and enforcement.
Chores involved in implementing the huge, complex plan were doled out among a host of cooperating environmental organizations, including The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, CARE/Guatemala, and others. Much of the financial backing and coordination is by the USA's Agency for International Development. I spoke to members of the Conservation International team, called ProPeten, so let me tell briefly of their part in the plan. ProPeten's main job, in the Multiple Use Zone, is to promote economic alternatives to forest-destroying livelihoods such as slash-and-burn farming, logging, and cattle ranching. Many of the small villages in the zone have traditionally supported themselves by extracting from the forests three natural products that are sold for export: Chicle (CHEE-clay), a base for chewing gum, is collected by cutting into the trunks of sapodilla (Manilkara zapota) trees (p. x). Most trees heal from the cuts and are used repeatedly. Xate (ZAH-tay) is a leafy part of a palm tree (genus Chamaedorea) (p. x) that is used in many flower arrangements. Allspice (p. x) is a cooking and fish-curing spice that comes from tree berries (Pimenta dioica) that are harvested and dried. ProPeten works with local people to develop these industries in ways that maximize profits but minimize harmful forest impact. For instance, they study how chicle-bearing trees respond to the gashing required to access the gum base, and try to develop new harvesting methods that are simple and inexpensive, yet minimize the negative impacts on the trees. Also, ProPeten works to help local villages develop small "cottage industries" that may eventually employ all or most people in a village. They have already assisted one village to create and market successfully to the international community a new product - a potpourri (an scented mixture of dried plant materials that many people place in drawers and other indoor areas to improve household odors), produced sustainably from rainforest products (including dried leaves, seeds, flowers, moss, and bark). In addition to such activities, ProPeten is involved in developing and marketing ecotourism in the Peten as another use of forests that is locally profitable yet minimally destructive.
Tourism in Guatemala is big business. Depending on whose statistics you accept, it is either the largest or second-largest (after coffee exports) source of income for the country. The number of foreign visitors, especially from North American and Europe, rose substantially as the civil war ended (from about 400,000 tourists in 1988 to about 550,000 in 1993, to more than 600,000 in 1995). Ecotourists make up an increasing percentage of the total. For decades, the Tikal area of the Peten has been an important tourist destination. But because the Tikal site can be significantly damaged by increased tourism, and because it would be sensible to involve more local people, in other regions, in profitable yet environmentally-clean tourism, additional ecotourist destinations are being developed. For example, ProPeten has recently developed three new tour routes within the Maya Biosphere Reserve. They plan the routes and organize and work with villagers so that these local people have better "products" (guide, tranportation, meal, and lodging services) to sell to travellers; they also help with promotion and international advertising. Two of the routes were already operating as I wrote this book: The Scarlet Macaw Trail (Ruta Guacamaya), a week-long trip by foot, boat, and minibus for hardy adventure-lovers through some of the last remaining good Scarlet Macaw-containing habitat left in Guatemala; and the Mirador Trail (Ruta Mirador), to the really remote El Mirador archaeological site, which takes at least 5 days, and moves via foot, mule, and boat. For information, contact Conservation International (2501 M St., NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC, 20037; USA phone: 1-800-429-5660; email: newmember@conservation.org).
This is an excerpt from the author's
Belize and Northern
Guatemala: The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide, (Academic Press, 1998). Contact the author via
email at ecotravel8@aol.com..
Eco Travels in Belize Eco Travels in Guatemala
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