And while the politics of that appointment is controversial - geopolitics is what's at play in the Chiquibul National Park and the Columbia Forest Reserve.
The Friends for Conservation and Development which co-manages Chiquibul recent got a helicopter to do an aerial survey of encroachments in the forest reserves and they took along the Ministers of Defense and Sustainable development.
They saw the road constructed over the last few weeks inside the Park and it leads to a creek likely for water to support cattle ranching activity in that southern region of the park by Guatemalans.
Further south, another road was documented occurring inside the Columbia River Forest Reserve in the Toledo District. The road goes more than 2 km inside Belize. They add that Illegal timber extraction has been known to be occurring in that forest reserve for many years, but now - incredibly - they saw the construction of wooden bridges to facilitate entry of trucks to extract the timber which can include rosewood, and other precious woods. They say that from the air the human activity appears active and fresh with amounts of timber stacked up.
It's a dangerous encroachment and we Weill be following up with the relevant ministers.
