Last night, you heard how Police Commissioner Chester Williams commended the BDF and their solid intelligence that led to the destruction of 120 thousand coca plants, which unknown narcotraffickers planted on Belizean soil at the southwestern edge of the Toledo District. That's a new enforcement challenge for the joint law enforcement team, but for years, the BDF and the Friends for Conservation and Development have been battling against encroachments in Belizean territory along the western border. The pristine jungles of the Chiquibul National Park have been cleared by Guatemalans who have ended in illegal activities like gold panning, Xate extraction, and poaching of wildlife that call those jungles home.
The most recent challenges have been forest clearing for farming and cattle ranching, and according to the BDF Commander, they recently had to clear illegal farms. Here's what he had to say about their plans to come up with new strategies to curb these incursions:
Brigadier General Azariel Loria
"The cattle ranching, the encroachment, plantations now are becoming a problem along the border. Just about 2-3 days ago we conducted a major operation to try to destroy some of those plantations, about 30 acres of planted in Belizean territory, so that is done with. We destroyed that. Of course, it's the Guatemalans that encroach on Belizean territories. So we have bigger challenges. The more destabilize Guatemala, the more it affects us, because those guys will be going along the border and coming into our pristine jungles and that's what they want to do. They want to plant, they want to do something, because they don't have land. They are not given or afforded the right to land in their country, so they come over to Belize. Strategies are being worked out; the cattle ranches are still a problem. Whenever we see cattle ranching, we report it to the Organization of American States, they conduct the verification and once that is done, we go and cut down the fences. But then we are trying to fine-tuned that strategy along with FCD. We are ready to sit down with them and come up with something firm in order to continue to stem the Guatemalans from doing raising their cattle in Belizean territory."
