On last night’s newscast, we took you inside the Chiquibul National Park and Forest Reserve. In our second of that three part feature on Chiquibul tonight we’ll look more closely at the xate trade and how it adversely affects conservation efforts. Last night we showed you the rafts that the xateros use to cross the Macal and Raspaculo Branch – tonight we’ll take you inside their camp.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
This is a Xate trail in the heart of the Chiquibul and these horses are not wild horses, they’re very underfed workers for a camp on the Raspaculo branch. We found one man washing and he dashed away, not to be seen again, but the mood was generally relaxed. The FCD team led by the armed rangers lead the way in - where there’s no standoff, an uneasy tension, but the sole Guatemalan adult is nonchalant, his boss, a Belizean has a permit - and he also has his papers, end of story.
The FCD team looks around the very Spartan accommodations - there's no xate here, right now just these sacks used for collecting it. The Forest Office confiscates a slingshot - which they believe is used to hunt birds. And that's just the concern that Lenny has.
Lenny Gentle, Scarlet Macaw Project Field Biologist
“For me it is frustrating to work, for me it is a frustration, it is a conflict in the management so I am calling fort he authorities to try to
look at this area. It is a conflicting area also for the security forces because the security forces don’t know who are legal xateros and who are illegal xateros in this area. The Chiquibul should not have been given out as a concession because they are still trying to contain all of these things. So I just hope that after this we can resolve this problem and sit around the table and plan because right now these guys don’t have no ID on them. We don’t know if they are here legally, some of them ran away in the bush when we reached here. We don’t know if they work here legally because they are all over the place.
We are in a core conservation area where the macaws are breeding and we have Guatemalan contractors working here. We have illegal and legal Guatemalan personnel working at this camp. So basically it is not a good idea to have people working where we have a species like the macaw.”
And indeed about 200 feet away just after a bend in the river we did see a pair of Macaws on this quamwood tree announcing their presence with their usual loud shrieks – definitely within earshot of the Xate camp too close for these conservationists.
Rafael Manzanero, Director – FCD
“The scarlet macaw it does bring, it can range from in the range of
2,500 quetzals and above. Then certainly I think it is going to be quite like tempting to go for this bird but we cannot really prove that indeed these guys are involved right now but certainly does give the environment to provide for such an opportunity. Once again the concession was probably granted without really making an analysis before hand where this permit was being granted for. Themselves having the permit and once again not really being monitored then they can involved. I cannot really be able to give you 100% if these guys are directly because we don’t really have the evidence but once you have them very close by to such a habitat, it can be tempting.”
And that is the thing – Chiquibul is a reserve that’s under pressure, from tourists from xateros, legal and illegal and loggers.
Andrew Lopez, Belize Forestry Dept.
“Well it is very overwhelming as the area is very large and we have very limited resources.”
Rafael Manzanero,
“We all understand that there is limited resources but those limited
resources then we have really to put the equation also: how many more things do we want to happen in this area if we have limited resources.”
Andrew Lopez,
“The threats well they are always there. The world is developing and we one of the few countries with the beauty that we have here that you all can see in the background. We are trying our best to do what we can do with our limited resources and hopefully our efforts are enough.”
Lenny Gentle,
“We are not only faced with a conservation issue, we are actually facing with a national patrimony. The xateros are not only collecting xate, they thief our caves, there are a lot of caves over here. They take our scarlet macaws, they loot our other types of animals, and they kill animals for subsistence so we lose a lot in the whole thing.”
Rafael Manzanero,
“It is really is a piece of land, it is a patrimony for all Belizeans and we want really to bring up that the magic that we have here, it belongs to all of us and we don’t really want for these things to be destroyed, particularly by people who perhaps are not really versed with our laws, people who don’t understand why we live as a society, and we need really to bring out this.”
And no doubt Chiquibul is a place of wonderment – almost beyond words, and looking at them now, not even the camera images do it justice – but while its beauty is a blessing, its breadth, the sheer expanse is a curse, and preserving this national treasure will take a unified, concerted effort – and we’re not convinced all the players are on the same page.
And tomorrow night, we’ll have the final part of that story as we divert our attention from the conservation element to a sort of natural wonder in the reserve – a limestone cascade that also used to serve as a watering hole for one of the many logging camps in the Chiquibul.
