Local groups support International Year of the Reef
2008 has been declared the International Year of the Reef and with the Belize Barrier Reef voted as one of the seven underwater wonders of the world, a consortium of local conservation groups is using the occasion to bring this invaluable resource into focus. According to PACT’s executive director Valdemar Andrade, just boasting about having the longest reef in the hemisphere does nothing to protect it. Tonight at the launch of the international campaign, PACT will announce a number of new initiatives.
Valdemar Andrade, Executive Director, PACT
“We’re going to launch the PACT challenge video. As you know, last year, 2007, we did a PACT challenge where we traversed the three atolls of Belize and looked at the challenge that the marine reserves are facing; which is mainly over-fishing, development and climate change which affects the reef on a whole. Climate change and natural disasters are something that we don’t have control of; we have control of over-fishing and we also have control of development. But in both cases it requires good technical background, capacities are there that we have the equipment to be able patrol, that we have to have the resources to go out there and make the arrest or make the education of the people who are basically affecting this resource. So that requires both financial resources but also political will on behalf of the government to be able to ensure that these things occur.”
Andrade warns that if the reef is to continue to support our tourism and fishing industries there are certain destructive practices that must become a thing of the past.
Valdemar Andrade
“Last year when they did the coastal clean up I think in about thirty-one miles of coast and river that they clean up they picked up about seven thousand pounds of garbage. They also did an underwater which is a shorter span and they picked up about four hundred pounds of garbage. So that just tells you the amount of garbage that we’re indiscriminately throwing outside of our vehicles or outside of the buses. Those things affect marine life because if they swallow the garbage they feel that they’re full and they don’t eat. Empty cans of pesticide or anything like that, when they get into the water body they create issues for the marine life. When we take fish and we shouldn’t out of season, all of those things intimately affects the way the reef works.”
A promotion called the reef challenge, along with local and international education programmes to promote awareness, stimulate interest in and finances for Belize’s marine resources are among the events planned for the International Year of the Reef. For more information visit the website www.iyor.org.
