Co-Managers of Protected Areas Also Get Assistance

Colin Young

As to the other sixty thousand dollars; it is being used to assist co-managers, who manage protected areas and parks on behalf of the government of Belize. The winds associated with Hurricane Earl damaged many of the visitors centers, the trail systems and many trees are down. PACT’s Board Chair, Doctor Colin Young told News Five that there are millions of dollars of damage to protected areas.

Dr. Colin Young, Chair, PACT

“The damage assessment is still being ascertained by all the managers, but what we know is that in some cases it’s in the millions of dollars, damage to large areas of forests; in the case of Programme for Belize, significant damage to their timber resources and then to the protected areas themselves. Most of them in fact had to be closed to the public and as a result they are not making any income. So this effort for the co-managers is to get them to get ready as quickly as possible so that they can start to bring in tourists again. Hurricanes normally of course we tend to focus on the human element for good reason—every human life is important. What often times escapes the attention is the damage to our biodiversity and our forest infrastructure. In Hurricane Richard, we saw that the damage was tremendous and the dry season that followed Richard was an extremely busy fire season and so it is incumbent on PACT which exists as an environmental organization to provide funding to assist in those efforts.”