New Video: Wildlife of Mirador National Park, Guatemala

Global Conservation recently released a new video highlighting the incredible biodiversity of Mirador National Park.

Read the full script below:

A vast, unbroken expanse of rainforest spills across the border between northeastern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Campeche. This was once the thriving epicenter of an extensive Maya civilization that sustained up to a million people, centered around a capital city called El Mirador.

Now, this is the Maya Biosphere Reserve, the largest protected area in Central America, covering almost one-fifth of Guatemala. The Maya Forest is one of the largest remaining blocks of tropical forest on Earth. In the millennium since El Mirador was abandoned, a cacophony of life has risen from the ashes of these ancient cities.

Now called Mirador National Park, this forest is bursting with diversity, a refuge for some of the most enchanting and endangered organisms on Earth. The park contains five kinds of tropical forest; just one hectare of this forest, about the size of a city block, can contain upwards of 200 tree species.

Sadly, almost half of the Selva Maya’s intact tropical forests and wildlife habitats have been destroyed in the past twenty years by logging and burning. Global Conservation is working with Francisco Asturias’ Genesys Project to save the jungles of Mirador.

Francisco Asturias: "Hello, my name is Francisco Asturias, and I have worked for over sixteen years in this park, a park that includes the most pristine, wild, and beautiful forest in Mesoamerica. This park, with its rich natural beauty and the cultural riches left us by our ancestors, the Mayas, makes this a special World Heritage Site. It is extremely important that this area, with its richness of birds, mammals, jaguars, tapirs, on top of its being an extremely beautiful forest, is protected by us all. Today there are many problems in this region, including illegal logging, illegal hunting, illegal fishing, and the looting of Mayan ruins."

These trees vibrate with the songs, calls, and footsteps of more than 200 animal species, including five of the six cats indigenous to Central America: cougars, ocelots, margays, jaguarundis, and the legendary jaguar.

Jaguars are a keystone species. They rule these forests as the top predator. Anyone who sees a jaguar will understand why. They’re the largest cat in the New World, with the strongest jaws of all of the big cats relative to their size.

Though they may seem indomitable, jaguars are rapidly declining across their range, due to deforestation, retaliatory hunting by ranchers, and poaching. They’re now considered to be near-threatened. Jaguars need vast areas for survival. One cat’s home range can exceed 150 square miles. For wild jaguars to persist into the next century, we need to make sure they have ample tracts of forest that are interconnected, allowing gene flow between populations. However, due to habitat destruction, jaguars have lost more than half of their historical territory, and just a few isolated populations remain in Central America.

One of the jaguar’s main food sources is the threatened white-lipped peccary. Snuffling through the undergrowth, feeding mostly on fruits, nuts, and greenery, these peccaries are an important indicator of the health of a rainforest.

Luis Pedro Castellanos: "In the past ten years the Maya Biosphere has lost seventy percent of its forests, and every year there are thousands of fires that threaten the environment, flora and fauna. If we don’t take care of it we will lose it soon."

Mirador is also a stronghold for some lesser-known species, which rely on this vast forest to survive. The endangered Baird’s tapir plays a critical role in the forest: by eating fruits and then traveling long distances, they disperse seeds to new areas through their feces.

In the canopy above, spider monkeys swing between branches, tussling with one another and feeding on fruits. Howler monkeys, one of the loudest animals on earth, claim their territories by unleashing gravelly barks that can be heard over three miles through the dense greenery.

An occasional flash of brilliant yellow or red hints at the dazzling bird species that call this forest home, like the keel-billed toucan. If you’re lucky, that flash of red might be a scarlet macaw. Only about 300 of them remain in Guatemala, and all of those live in the Maya Biosphere Reserve, thanks to concerted conservation and reintroduction programs.

Endemic to Central America, the spectacular ocellated turkey puts their North American cousins to shame with their iridescent feathers and bright blue head. Mirador is on a critical flyway for birds migrating from central and eastern North America.

Francisco Asturias: "Thanks to the support we have received from many national and international organizations, like Global Conservation, we have been able to create a special group of park rangers that we call the Genesis Group. These young men are united in and have done a fantastic job in preserving and protecting the area against threats like illegal hunting, looting of archaeological sites, and lately, illegal logging coming from Mexico."

Cristina Barillas: "There is a lot of animals we need to protect right now, and we have to take action just to start protecting them and ensuring that they have a future there."

Any one of these wonders of nature would make Mirador critical to conserve; but together, they create a priceless tapestry that we simply can’t afford to lose. We need to take rapid action to protect this critical landscape, unparalleled in its value to the planet. With Global Park Defense, Global Conservation is defending Mirador to ensure the preservation of its past while securing the future of one of the most biologically rich places on earth.

Francisco Asturias: "Planet earth faces serious problems. the good news is that we can still do something, if we act now. You can do something. Support the organizations that are helping us do our job to preserve and protect — they are helping us, the park rangers on the front lines protecting that which is ours, protecting that which is yours, and protecting that which will belong to our children. Act now!"