WCS Forum Concludes in Belize City

Using the Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, SMART, participants demonstrated solutions to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fisheries using drones.  They also discussed commonalities of Marine Protected Areas compliance gaps, as well as capacity needs for the region.

Julio Maaz, Technical Coordinator, WCS

Julio Maaz

“The Wildlife Conservation Society works across the globe in the conservation of wildlife and wild places.  In order for us to be effective in our work we need to do a lot of networking.  We need to be able to partner with different institutions, government, NGOs, individuals in order to be successful in saving wildlife and wild places.  And so, bringing people from ten different countries to this workshop really improves our networking and allows us to not only provide the insight that we’ve learned from our tests and the use of technology here in Belize, but it also allows us to get an idea of what’s happening outside of Belize and see how those other applications being used outside of Belize can also help us secure our fishing grounds and our natural resources.”