Yesterday we told you about the mandate of the Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future, and how it provides support for these organizations co-managing 26 protected areas. Two of those organizations, The southern environmental Association, SEA, and Fragments of Hope spoke about the challenges that they have faced in conducting conservation investments out at Laughing Bird Caye, from surveillance to coral restoration. Both of these managers shared the difficulties they have faced in the work that they do.
Elizabeth Muschamp, Executive Director, SEA
"I think each area whether it is financing sustainable financing enforcement each one of them comes with their own level of challenges, funding is always an issue like I learned for this camera here, when we put in the camera here we said okay im going to buy this camera, use the money for the camera for the tower and then to bring materials to the island was almost $10,000 just to bring that material so it is a challenging space to work in but like I said when we think of it as something insurmountable it becomes difficult, I think every aspect of co management has its own challenges and I think it is about thinking about the bigger picture of what we are doing we are doing it for the Belizean people for the world to see and I think that is what motivates myself and my team to find the necessary solutions and funding and be creative, we need to be creative in finding solutions to address those challenges we may encounter or we do encounter."
Natasha Gibson, Fragments of Hope
"Well I started in 2017 out planting when everything was nice and pretty and before all this crazy changes so now we have diverted since all the climate change is happening, all the bleaching events. We hardly ever plant coral anymore more so monitoring is done."
"Each site we collect abut 200 corals we survey for the day at each site and about 3 different sites per day we monitor."
"Laughing bird Caye was one of the best sites ever when I started to work because it had been hit tremendously by a storm and we had lost about 90 something percent of coral coverage around here and at that point when I started the coverage was building up back meaning we were out doing a lot of work here a lot of out planting everything was thriving and looking great ad again once again climate change and everything has been changing we have had devastating loss especially last yeare have lost tremendous amounts of corals around laughing bird Caye."
We'll have the full story from Laughing Bird right down to Sapodilla Caye on Monday.
