Baboon Sanctuary opens educational facility
The eerie echo of a Howler Monkey’s cry can travel for miles, sometimes sending a chill down the spine, but always directing the eyes to the treetops, hoping for a glimpse of these magnificent creatures. It’s that kind of emotion that drives more than twenty thousand tourists a year to the Community Baboon Sanctuary in Bermudian Landing. For several months now, village leaders, funded by the Protected Areas Conservation Trust, have been working hard on a new facility that will hopefully find even more friends for their beloved baboons. Jacqueline Woods reports.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
The family of six black howler monkeys had no problem ignoring us, and our camera. The baboons, as they are locally called, went about their normal activities as if we were not even there. But their presence was the highlight of our tour of the Community Baboon Sanctuary as part of the official opening of a multipurpose educational centre located in Bermudian Landing in the Belize District. The new education centre, a first of its kind for the village, will be managed by the Community Baboon Sanctuary Women Conservation Group.
Jessie Young, President, Women’s Group
“The students had to travel all the way into Belize City to do homework for the next day, or maybe just to copy a sheet of paper. And they used to come knocking on my door at night just to use the only computer we had in the office there. And so we think…in fact, it was a priority for the area and also it would be used for an activity room for the young people, especially a scout group that we are just about organising. And also, this is summer time and we will have summer classes in English, reading math and so on for all the students that will not be doing anything for the holidays.”
The building was constructed at a cost of forty-eight thousand dollars and funded by the Protected Areas Conservation Trust.
Valerie Woods, Executive Director, PACT
“The Community Baboon Sanctuary is currently managed by the Women’s Conservation Group. They have a proven track record of bringing back the sanctuary to a transparent level in terms of its financing, in terms of reporting to other donors, not only to PACT, and they will continue to oversee. As a result of their management, there is the visitor’s centre, this multipurpose centre and now the restaurant. You should know that this sanctuary, what they do with their funds that they pool the fund into a community fund and disburse it by a formula that they have come up with among the villagers. Scholarships are being given out, people are now able to access some loans as a result.”
The ceremony was just one way PACT decided to celebrate its seventh anniversary to mark their years of work with community based project groups.
Valerie Woods
“This year is an important year, it’s a strategic year for us. We are undergoing our strategic plan; we’re doing a brainstorming session with our board and council to determine how better we can disburse the funds. In the past what we used to do is just put out cause for proposals where we invite the groups to submit an application. Now we’re rethinking that and we’re trying to work with projects that are in the pipeline and really look at the needs of these protected areas and develop multi-year projects much larger than the thirty-five thousand dollars, enter partnership agreements and begin to fundraise outside of Belize.”
Today the Community Baboon Sanctuary has approximately four thousand black howler monkeys and every week, an estimated three hundred tourists visit these amazing animals. Community leaders are hoping that the new centre will now increase the number of visitors to their area.
Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
