Chiquibul faces massive deforestation

Encompassing two hundred and forty-six thousand acres of land, the Chiquibul National Park is the largest protected area in Belize. But most of the reports on this newscast about the area centre not around its beauty, but on the destruction of its resources by our neighbours to the west. And instead of getting better, the situation appears to be worsening. News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports from the Cayo District.

Rafael Manzanero, Executive Dir., F.C.D.
“The main, main key thing that we do is to generate information about to what is occurring on the ground.”

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Since 2006, Friends for Conservation and Development has been co-managing the Chiquibul National Park along with the Forest Department and as such is responsible for its day to day management.

Established almost twenty years ago as a youth environmental group, the N.G.O. operates from its head office in San Jose, Succotz in the Cayo District. Rafael Manzanero is its Executive Director.

Rafael Manzanero
“The Chiquibul National Park is perhaps one of the most challenging areas to manage because of a forty-five kilometer area that we share with Guatemala and also as a result of the many years of inactivity in terms of monitoring and surveillance, it was an area that was abandoned in terms of management and so there have been a lot of challenges and threats that right now we are trying really to control.”

The Guatemalan trespassers cut xate, hunt animals, log, and even clear the forests to plant corn and grow cattle.

Rafael Manzanero
“We are facing a nation that is much more larger in scope, larger in population, and larger in terms of the poverty levels in Guatemala. We know already that some fifty thousand people migrate annually from the highlands in Guatemala and coming down to the Peten area. So that is a pressure point and these people are seeking new lands and looking at new opportunities. So this is going to be a current of activities along our frontier. And so as a country we feel that we need to put forward more determined action to combat something like this.”

When we flew over the area in May, the clearings were easily spotted… and since then other borderline flights have revealed more. The incursions, says Manzanero, have been occurring since the 1980s and have been steadily escalating.

Rafael Manzanero
“I don’t think we understand the magnitude of the problem and that is what we are trying to resurface. We are trying to say that it is not five acres, it is not ten acres, we are talking about massive deforestation problems that are occurring at the hands of people that are not even Belizeans and this is really a cause of alert for us now.”

Operating with a meager staff of ten persons of ten persons, F.C.D. relies on partners such as the Forest Department, Belize Defence Force, Police Department and even their N.G.O. counterparts in Guatemala to conduct patrols.

Rafael Manzanero
“In order to stop it, in order to at least control it, we certainly need to Guatemalan support and that comes from the governmental sector of course. It is something that Belize government needs to be much more in terms of bringing out the real situation and what is happening. What we are proposing is to put in another two observation posts along the border, particularly in areas that are more susceptible right now for Guatemalan incursions and that would be along the Valentin area and along another point which is called Sevada, which is more in the southern edge of the Caracol Archaeological Reserve. The third component is then really to patrol more along that border.”

The demarcation of the northern boundary line of the Chiquibul National Park by Trekforce and the establishment of an observation post near Rio Blanco some five hundred and thirty-five meters from the border have greatly assisted the F.C.D. The NGO is also in the process of developing a management plan for the area.

The Chiquibul is filled with wildlife and has the largest known network of caves in Central America and is also home to the highest point in Belize. But one of its major benefits to Belizeans and even Guatemalans is water. In November the F.C.D. will embark on a project to encourage twenty-two communities along the Chiquibul Maya Mountains to protect that “Blue Gold.”

Pedro Chan, Environmental Educator, F.C.D.
“The objective of this campaign is to target the people from this community to instill in them water conservation, consciousness and to instill in them a higher conservation ethic. Another objective of the campaign is to work closely with the private sector.”

Rafael Manzanero
“These protected areas were made considerably for the protection of watersheds. It is really is beyond the scope of in terms of pricing gold. Water, we need it and that really comes from those mountains, so we ought to protect it.”

Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.

Funding for F.C.D.’s activities comes from organizations such as PACT, the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund and the Nature Conservancy.