Symposium looks at growth of private protected areas
This week approximately twenty-seven conservationists from around the world made their way to La Milpa Field Station in Orange Walk for a symposium on “Financial Sustainability of Private Protected Areas.” According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the World Land Trust, the gathering allows the men and women to share ideas and experiences as the practice of N.G.O.s creating protected areas continues to take root.
Mark Hoogeslag, Land Purchase Coordinator, IUCN Netherlands
“In many countries that is not exactly a high priority for governments to create new protected areas. Many times they’ve got no sources available, no money, no manpower to create new areas etcetera. And that’s why it’s very important in those situations that the N.G.O.s step in and create their own private reserves. When we started in 2006, we only received about six to ten funding requests each year and we now see that in the last couple years we get more and more good quality proposals so the idea is catching on seriously.”
John Burton, C.E.O., World Land Trust
“Private land reserves require a lot of money. Very often governments aren’t prepared to subsidise them and yet governments are prepared to subsidise national parks. So one of the suggestions from one of our colleagues from Guatemala was that we should put much more pressure on governments to support the private nature reserves. In Belize this occurs to a small extent in as much as there are tax concessions so that the private reserves can functions.”
One of Belize’s first private protected areas was started by Programme for Belize almost twenty years ago. From the initial purchase of one hundred and ten thousand acres, today the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area boasts two hundred and sixty thousand and is an ideal habitat for deer, jaguars and migratory birds. And while they are already using eco-tourism as an income earner, according to Executive Director Edilberto Romero, he’s left the
symposium with many new ideas.
`Edilberto Romero, Executive Dir., Programme for Belize
“One of the innovative ways of raising money is through carbon. Trees absorb carbon and produce oxygen and the carbon is stored in the trees and basically there are people who are willing to pay for the carbon or willing pay for the trees that are there. There different ways. We learn from this symposium that you can even auction the views that you have and people are willing to pay that you maintain a view or you maintain a certain watershed or things like that.”
The first symposium was held in the Netherlands in 2006.
