Watch Now: Saving La Selva Maya
This mini-documentary was shot in the summer of 2022. Featuring interviews with Mirador National Park Director Francisco Asturias and the Executive Director of Global Conservation Jeff Morgan.
In 2021 a group of over a dozen conservation organizations made a critical purchase of land - in the heart of the Maya Biosphere.
The Belize Maya Forest, nearly a quarter million acres, was purchased for 75 million dollars from a former logging company, making this deal one of the most important tropical forest purchases for conservation in the past decade. Together with the Rio Bravo Conservation Area, these two areas make up almost 10% of Belize and are known as the Great Belize Maya Forest, providing protection for over half a million acres of endangered savannas, wetlands, and tropical rainforest. While funding for the land purchase was made possible by a large loan, funding for park and wildlife protection is also critically needed.
Global Conservation has responded by agreeing to deploy Global Park Defense in the Great Belize Maya Forest. Global Park Defense is a multi-year program of systems, equipment, and training using satellite monitoring, cellular trail cam surveillance, SMART patrolling, and rapid response teams to fight against illegal hunting and logging in endangered national parks in developing countries.
Francisco Asturias is an experienced user of Global Park Defense as the Director of Mirador National Park in Guatemala and head of the Genesys protection force. Francisco works with Global Conservation in Latin American parks where Global Park Defense is being deployed. He is widely recognized as an expert in jaguar conservation, leading biodiversity monitoring in the Maya Biosphere for over the last twelve years.
The biodiversity of the Great Belize Maya Forest is astonishing. This intact tropical forest hosts over 200 species of trees, 390 species of birds, and 80 species of mammals, including one of the world’s healthiest jaguar populations and other endangered wildlife.
Ancient cities of the Maya are spread throughout the forest’s dense undergrowth. The purchase of the Belize Maya Forest very likely saved this former forestry concession from being cleared for industrial-scale agriculture, as has been the fate for much of Belize. Mennonite immigrants have cleared over 2.5 million acres of the formerly rich jungle for mass agriculture and cattle ranching. Wildfires set for illegal crop cultivation, wildlife poaching, and illegal logging are all current threats to the park.
Real park protection is needed in the Belize Maya Forest which has few rangers and only one truck. These rangers also lack critical patrolling gear, communications, and surveillance technology. Global Conservation stepped up to provide five years of direct funding for equipment, training, and patrol operations needed to protect these beautiful forests and wildlife habitats.
Deploying Global Park Defense to the Belize Maya Forest and Rio Bravo Conservation Areas is growing the patrol teams to twenty rangers. They are reinforcing the three major entrance gates and 125 miles of reserve boundaries using new trucks, ATVs, and surveillance systems to achieve "No Cut, No Kill" protection. Tourism and carbon offset financing also has the potential to provide long-term revenues for lasting park protection.
Filmed, produced, and narrated by W.J. McKay.