Monkey River rebounds from storm
On Sunday, Prime Minister Said Musa took the opportunity to visit the village of Monkey River. What he found was that despite being almost totally demolished by Hurricane Iris, a spirit of renewal has gripped the community and residents, instead of griping, are working. Janelle Chanona and Brent Toombs made their own trip to Monkey River on Sunday and found that in the three weeks since News 5 last visited, a lot had changed.
Malvery Garbutt
“I glad fu see everybody deh work, hand in hand. Nobody de fuss or fight again, everybody just de try do thing again fu themselves. God mek Iris come fu show we how fu live.”
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
The rebuilding of Monkey River village has been a community effort, one that has produced substantial improvement to the area since the visit of Hurricane Iris.
Leonardo Castro, Resident
“Everyone come together now, they build one house, a next group go and build that house over there, like that you know.”
Eleanor Sandlin, Chairperson, Monkey River Village
“We do not want to leave, no one is planning on leaving. So we are living where we can, how we can, and I am quite sure in the next two to three months, if you should come back, it’ll be big, big surprise because we’ll have a lot of homes back up. But no one is leaving and we are happy to be here even though we had such a disaster.”
But in the midst of all this progress, a different kind of threat looms on the horizon. The severe impact the hurricane had on the fishing industry, coupled with the destruction of the forest, could pose long-term problems for these people. One concern is that in the dry season, the fallen canopy will become a fire hazard.
The forest is also home to a primary revenue earner for the village: the Black Howler Monkey. Before Iris, the growing number of visitors to the area were guaranteed to see several troops of monkeys meandering through the treetops. Today, it takes a trained eye to spot the solitary creatures creeping through the tangled vines and debris.
Immediately after the storm, the primates’ future was especially precarious, as the animals’ food source had been wiped out. Concerned villagers had to put out bananas.
Alfonso Zuniga, Chairman, Monkey River Tour Guide Assoc.
“Whenever we came back and did our checks, there were no bananas there, so we believe it was actually the monkeys and other wildlife that actually feeds on them. But at this moment, just weeks after the hurricane actually hit, there were quite a number of young leaves, the cicropia, trumpet, the phycus, that the monkeys actually feeds on. But the exact, like three or four days after the hurricane itself, the monkeys were feeding on mangrove leaves, which was quite rare for them to feed on mangrove leaves.”
Students from Canada’s University of Calgary have been documenting the monkeys’ behaviour for most of this year. Surrounded by all this destruction, it would seem likely that the monkeys would move to another area with more food available.
Olivia Brusselers, Primatology Student
“It’s possible they could move, but as it is now from what they’re seeing, there’s no better place to move to. They might slowly move around but from where they are, they can’t see a forest five hundred meters down the road or anything to move to, so chances are they will stay where they are and continue to survive. They might expand their ranges a bit, so there might be a lot more fighting going on between the groups and stuff.”
Dana Nowak, Primatology Student
“Probably we’ll see populations stay fairly small for the next while because of the limited food and access to shelter. So the resources will probably keep those groups small for the next I would predict for the next five years or so before we see the populations coming back to what they should be.”
For now, the monkeys are trying hard to adapt to their “new” home.
Alonso Zuniga
“What they actually do in the course of the evening, coming on to the night, is come close to the village and they just slouch in the trees. They stay a little bit lower than where the canopy was, because it’s pretty hot up top so they stay a little lower and they stay right within that area.”
But while people like Zuniga are eager to protect the primates, others are ready to take advantage of their vulnerability.
Malvery Garbutt
“The monkey deh no gat no where to stay, no food fu eat, they come down pan ground. People de kill deh fu eat deh, cause the people back a Mango Walk no gat food, people no deh give them food so they whap up the baboon and kill deh and eat them.”
The practice of eating monkeys is not unheard of in Belize, but with the troops here forced to exist in this exposed environment, survival of the fittest’ takes on a whole new meaning.
Dana Nowak
“The idea that we’re working under is that hurricanes is something that shapes not only the ecology but probably the monkey social organisation too. So the next step is to discover how the hurricane is impacting them and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
Olivia Brusselers
“We’re pretty sure the monkeys are here to stay for a while, for a lot longer. They have food available to them, so if they continue, it will be in smaller populations so some of the younger members will die out just due to competition, but they’ll be here to stay.”
Janelle Chanona
“Less than a month after Hurricane Iris destroyed this village, reconstruction is well underway. But the greatest challenge ahead will be protection of its natural resources, especially the primates that gave this community its name. Reporting from Monkey River, I am Janelle Chanona for News 5.”
Twenty-eight of forty homes in Monkey River were either destroyed or significantly damaged. Future economic prospects for the village are uncertain, however, as the dozens of tourists who formerly visited the village daily from Placencia to see the monkeys are not likely to return anytime soon.
