Zoo Camp promotes conservation
It’s never easy to pinpoint exactly when and why public attitudes change, but one area on which Belizeans have taken on a new awareness is that of the environment. And while one reason is certainly the global influence of the media, another, closer to home, is the outreach work of the Belize Zoo. Today I travelled up the Western Highway where I found some students hard at work.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
This morning, if you happened to pass mile twenty-nine on the Western Highway you could not help but noticed a group of children busily picking up garbage. The youths, primary school students from across the country, have been attending a five-day conservation camp hosted by Belize Zoo, The Tropical Education Centre, and the Protected Areas Conservation Trust, PACT.
Celso Poot, Education Dir., Tropical Education Centre
?This is our twelfth conservation camp and every year we do a clean up about two miles along the Western Highway just in front of the Zoo proper. And this has always been an eye opener for the students, they get to see the amount and type of garbage people throw out the windows while travelling.?
Littering has become so common on our highways that the boys and girls say they are not surprised about what they have been bagging.
Corie Johnson, Participant, Conservation Camp
?I see it everyday. We are going behind buses and they just through the stuff out and they just don?t have respect for wildlife and their country and it?s just all over the place. You get use to it after you see it a lot and after you do it a lot, you don?t feel bad about doing it anymore.?
Alexander Humes, Participant, Conservation Camp
?The people they don?t really care about what is happening in the environment today, so they don?t worry, they just throw away their bottles. But it is really not healthy for the environment because the trees need to grow and we need the oxygen from the tree to live, so it?s really not healthy.?
And according to education director Celso Poot, it?s that kind of conservation-minded attitude they want the young campers to develop. Poot says while he recognizes that improper solid waste disposal is a major problem, he has been encouraged by the improvements he has seen during the years that he has been involved in the clean up.
Celso Poot
?One good thing to say is that we don?t find a lot of the Coke, Fanta, and Sprite bottle anymore. That five cents incentive given to return those bottles is really paying off. You find a lot of phone cards, a lot of bus tickets, but right now you get a lot of tyres, car tyres. People who get blow-out on the road just leave the tyres there.?
In less than an hour the children had ten bags full of garbage. The collection was definitely an eye-opener for young Inga Woods. Woods plans to use the information she has gathered at the camp to make her peers aware why it would be in their best interest to keep the environment clean.
Inga Woods, Participant, Conservation Camp
?That you never pollute your wild life environment because if you throw bottles and garbage, it will affect the environment. So we won?t have any plants to build; it will be more extinct like the animals. So we have to learn not to pollute mostly.?
Today was the final day at camp, but all agreed it was a rewarding experience.
The children not only cleaned the highway, but they were taken on a night tour of the zoo, went canoeing the Sibun River and took a one day hike at the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. Next week a group of senior students will embark on their own conservation activities.
