Young Male Tapir Killed on John Smith Link Road
A young tapir lost its life on Sunday night. It’s the second tapir killed in a road traffic accident on the John Smith Link Road in two months. Images from the accident show the tapir dead on the scene and an SUV with damage to the vehicle’s front portion. Today, Celso Poot, the Operations Manager of the Belize Zoo and Ph.D. candidate carrying out doctoral research into tapirs, says the death of the mountain cow is not just disturbing, but tragic for the species. Poot points out that the area has a high density of tapirs, but nothing has been done to conserve the national animal even though he raised concerns before the new road was built. Here’s the story.
Andrea Polanco, Reporting
This young male tapir was knocked down and killed on the John Smith Link Road on Sunday night. Celso Poot is the Operations Manager of the Belize Zoo. He is also a Ph.D candidate who has been carrying out research on tapirs in Belize for many years. Through his studies and work with the animals, he found out that there appears to be a high number of tapirs in the John Smith Link Road area. So, when the area was being developed, he raised concerns about how those activities could displace these animals.
Celso Poot
Celso Poot, Operations Manager, The Belize Zoo
“It was very sad; it was very disturbing because this is the second recorded tapir that has been knocked down on that road since November. We had a very large male tapir got knocked down in November and now this second one is also a male, but a very young male, not fully matured. It could be a young what we call a dispersing male and so he is trying to find his home, the area that he will inhabit. When they constructing the airport link road and I made an appearance at the consultation and made them aware that the area has a high density of tapir and mitigation measures would need to be put in place for tapir safe crossing in that area. The concern was noted and the report I got was that they were going to put rumble strips in place.”
But the developer didn’t install rumble strips on the road to slow down the vehicles and help keep drivers alert. Nor were tapir crossing signs placed in the area to warn drivers. This video shows that motorists are traveling at high speed through this new road during the day and Poot is concerned that even more tapirs will be hit during the night, as this area is dark and tapirs move slowly when crossing roads which make them targets for fast moving vehicles. Poot is currently carrying out research with the help of cameras to learn how humans influence the movement, behavior and occurrence of tapirs in the Belize District. He calls on the authorities for safety measures to be implemented which can save an animal or a human life.
Celso Poot
“We wouldn’t want somebody to crash into a tapir and die because they give the tapir a black eye, you know, they give the tapir a bad name. So, we would want to avoid that and so I am appealing to the Ministry of Works to look at the area. The road is new and we were out there this morning and the amount of traffic on the road and the speeding – it is very concerning for wildlife in the area. Out in this, what we call also human modified landscape because there are a lot of people out there. With the airport link road, that whole area is now like an island because you have the Philip Goldson Highway; Burrell Boom Road; Airport Link Road; the George Price Highway – now they are in an island. They have now four major roads that they need to cross and so we need to look at that seriously how we are going to mitigate to help our national animal survive well into the future.”
But the future of the tapir hangs in the balance – one of the biggest threats to their survival is the loss of habitat – like this young tapir that was knocked down because his range became fragmented due to the construction of a new road. But conservationists and researchers like Poot are working hard to ensure that the Belize’s population of tapirs remains strong and healthy, although they don’t know approximately how many there are in the wild. Globally, the numbers are dwindling and mountain cows are endangered. Research shows that there may be only five thousand mature tapirs left throughout the geographic range of southern Mexico to northern Colombia. The conservation of tapir is critical to the biodiversity of ecosystems across the world because these mammals play important roles that help to maintain the rich variety of plants and animals. Poot points out that one of those roles these animals play is that of seed dispersers – which has a direct impact on timber activities in Belize.
Celso Poot
“One of the timbers that is of economic value to Belize – the sapodilla. We harvest the sapodilla and that is an economic important species of timber. But the tapir is one of the main disperser of seeds of the sapodilla. But the sapodilla fruit is a big fruit so very few of the wildlife can move the seed across the forest for regeneration. The tapir, it has been proven through research, is one of the few species that moves sapodilla seed and it moves them far from the parent tree.”
Reporting for News Five, I’m Andrea Polanco.
If you want to know more about tapirs in Belize, you can check out The Belize Tapir Project on Facebook.
