By Sam Hare Steig of the University of Vermont
As the trucks pulled up to the Bladen Ranger Base, we eagerly piled our gear in the beds and clambered into the cabs. Some of the rangers sat in the beds, enjoying the wind whipping through their hair as we cruised along the Southern Highway – the main road that connects the more populated northern Belize to southern Belize.
We had spent ten days checking camera traps in the Bladen Nature Reserve (BNR) and were on our way to Maya Mountain Northern Forest Reserve (MMNFR). Ya’axché, the Belizean conservation organization we are working with, manages both protected areas. They describe BNR as the “crown jewel” of their protected areas. BNR consists of 100,000 acres of intact and undisturbed broadleaf forest habitat. Although it was sometimes difficult with bugs, heat, and perpetually wet clothes, I felt lucky to have spent time there. Only those who have permits for environmental education or academic research are allowed to enter. MMNFR is a smaller protected area, 36,000 acres, with a focus on agroforestry. Sustainable timber harvesting, cacao farming and ecotourism is added to the list of permittable activities there. Our goal at MMNFR was to extract the SD cards from the 16 camera traps so we could identify the animals that walked by in the past two months.
As we turned off the highway and onto a dirt road, I looked out the window to admire the variety of houses on our left. Some houses were thatch, some concrete and some wooden. The thatch houses are made from the cohune palm, a common tree species that grows long and sturdy palm branches. This is one of the species that Ya’axché allows selective harvesting of from some of their protected areas. From behind one of the thatch houses came a bicycle with three passengers. A woman steered and pedaled the bicycle. A young girl sat on her lap. On the handlebars was a yellow-headed parrot, its whole body bobbing to the bumps in the road.
I felt a likeness to the parrot as I was also being jostled around due to the bumpy road. After one particularly jarring bump our driver, Tush, pointed out a truck and explained that they are the cause of the potholes and deep ruts that marred the road. The trucks were carrying out bananas from the plantations lining the right side of the road. The owners of the plantation are foreigners, and the workers are mainly immigrants. Most Belizeans would not work for only $26 (Belizean) for twelve hours of work. In US dollars, this wage is only a little more than one dollar an hour.
After half an hour of banana plantations the land abruptly changed. The bananas disappeared and, in their place, came a variety of vegetable, orange, and plantain farms. The process for acquiring private farmland in Belize is simple. The person who clears the land first owns it. This investment of time and effort is respected by others in the community as property rights. Tush explained to us that some of the land we were seeing used to be part of MMNFR which was owned by the Belizean government. The now farmland was protected but the boundaries were not enforced by patrols. People cleared some of MMNFR for farming, possibly without knowledge of its protected status. In 2015 the protection of MMNFR was passed down to Ya’axché. The sections of land cleared by farmers was de-listed as protected and the ownership of these lands legally given to those who cleared it.
The truck came to a stop before the Trio River. We camped just on the other side of the river, on the edge of the MMNFR protected area. I was relieved to be camping near water again. While staying at the Bladen Ranger Base we had to be careful about water consumption. All the water for washing dishes and showering was rainwater. If it didn’t rain for a couple days, we would have to go to the river which was a forty-minute walk away. Drinking water had to be brought in by truck in five-gallon jugs.
At Maya Mountains, the river became our shower and sink. We could even drink from the river since it flowed straight from the mountains and there was no riverside development before it reached us. As soon as hammocks and tents were set up, we all went for an afternoon swim.
The next day we began checking camera traps. This brought us through several of the 26 cacao farms scattered throughout the protected area. The cacao fruit are a beautiful range of colors, from light green to vibrant yellows and reds. The fruit comes from tiny white flowers which cover the entire trunk and branches of healthy trees. One variety of Cacao grown in Belize is called fine flavored cacao. This variety needs 60 to 70 percent shade for optimal growth. Taller trees are left growing in the cocoa farms to provide shade. The pruning of these taller trees to create the right shade for the cacao can lead to difficult decisions for the farmers. Some trees provide important fruit for scarlet macaws or are a rare species. Does one prune the tree to provide the proper shade to the cocoa or leave the tree intact for the welfare of the surrounding ecosystem? The holistic decisions that farmers must make are part of what defines this farming as agroforestry.
In the future, Ya’axché hopes that the value of cacao grown in their protected areas will rise. Hopefully buyers will begin to place greater value on products that come from farms which incorporate the health of the surrounding ecosystem and biodiversity into their management decisions.