As it comes to a close, Phototgrapher Jason Houston remarks about his journey in Belize. As the title suggests, Jason has takes quite a few photos of the people he has met and the places he has visited. Check them out!

The great thing about gigs like this in the tropics is that you are reminded to slow down (as you wait around for new plans after yet one more change in the schedule). Then you learn to go even slower (as you wait for video to upload to the blog through a rural Central American wireless connection). You get back into napping (crammed into a long ride on a slow bus stuck in traffic), try new things (unexpectedly in your tamale), and you get to meet new people (many speaking beautiful languages, like Kriol, that you can not understand). 

This pair of site visits makes for my 6th and 7th for Rare and were the first for Matt Jenkins, the environmental writer who was traveling with me. Some of the campaigns I’ve visited were examples of great successes and others give us examples of where the greatest challenges for Pride might lie in the future. This time around we followed the most significant watershed in Belize from the headwaters in the Chiquibul-Maya Mountains, north and east to the lowlands and through the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary toward Belize City.

The communities along the way were exceptionally open and generous with their time, giving us the best sense yet not only for how Pride works, but also how it fits into the larger picture of all the work happening in communities facing the need to reconcile conservation with development. Through Rafael Manzanero at Friends for Conservation and Development we covered the recent history of environmental work in Belize, and how his Pride Alumni Grant fits into his current work as the managers of Belize’s first national park. With Olivia Carballo-Avilez at the Belize Audubon Society we explored an example of the delicate balance that must be sought when managing protected areas that include established communities.  Here are some highlights from the first round of picture editing as we pack up to head home. 

Jason Houston spends a few days exploring Pride in Belize and the communities the conservation campaign is targeting. Watch video of Olivia and her Pride mascot Jumbo Roo!

The poster hanging in Crooked Tree Village featuring Jimbo Roo the Jabiru Stork 

Most of Olivia’s Campaign on the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary is focused on Crooked Tree, a small rural village on the main island literally in the middle of the Sanctuary’s protected area (see the first post on Crooked Tree). This is the community with the largest influence (and dependence) on the sanctuary, where the most challenging community dynamics exist (see second post on Crooked Tree), and so for us it’s where we can learn the most about how the Pride methodology can fill in gaps in more traditional conservation work when a local community’s involvement is difficult but required.

This is where we’re staying and where we’ve spent most of our time, participating in Olivia’s campaign events or wandering in the community, talking with people—some friendly, some reluctant—to get their perspectives. We’ve been invited in for coffee, stayed for lunch, were asked to and attended a Village Council meeting, and even hitched a ride to the championship cricket game with the team. (As it turns out Crooked Tree has one of the best cricket teams in the country and they’re playing for the national title.) Even though we’ve only been here for a week (it feels a lot longer) we’re starting to get a sense of this community outside of the Pride campaign—the inevitable complexities of conservation versus development, needs versus values, and the many individual agendas that drive progress in a small, insulated community like this.

Crooked Tree Village is definitely a central character in this story and it really is singularly important. But there are also four other communities Olivia is working in—Biscayne, Gardenia, Lemonal, and Belize City—and we’ve spent the last two days visiting them and doing more of the traditional-type Rare Pride Activities, like school and mascot visits. 

Lemonal, Belize. One of the five communities Olivia Carballo-Avilez is working in with her campaign for the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary.

Day One on the road began at 6am, with an epic, standing-room-only bus ride into Belize City. We arrived an hour-and-a-half later and walked over to Belize Audubon’s offices, first through the run-down part of downtown—a place guide books warn against. Then next, and worse, several blocks through (and there was a sign) the ‘Tourist District’—a place guide books direct you to—which was really just a horrible gauntlet of pushy taxi drivers, shady tour operators, curio stands, and the occasional solicitation for less-than-legal endeavors.  

The Belize River in Belize City, the ultimate destination for all the water that flows out of the Chiquibul-Maya Mountains (see my first post from this trip, “Capturing Belize”) and through the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. 

The original plan was to spend some time on the streets of Belize City this afternoon with Jimbo Roo the Jabiru (Olivia’s mascot – the Jabiru Stork), encouraging people to come to a video showing later this evening in Lemonal. Many people who live out along the northern highway in the small outlying villages work in the city, and sometimes coming here is a good way to reach them. Lemonal is a small community (several hundred people) at the southern tip of the Sanctuary. But when we arrived in the offices Olivia told us she’d made arrangements with the Village chairwoman in Lemonal to try to get most of the village to attend, and since we just had a small community center to use she didn’t want to over-book the event. Good news for her show, but we were disappointed not to get to see Jimbo Roo out on the bustling streets of Belize City. 

Me outside Deep Sea Marlin’s in downtown Belize. 

So with several hours to kill before heading back out of town, Matt and I put our heads down and plowed back out through the Tourist Village and across the river to old downtown. We found a little local restaurant—Marlin’s Deep Sea Restaurant—right along the Belize River. We sat out back for a three-hour breakfast of Belizean chicken and fried beans, complete with multiple cups of instant coffee and a tall stack of fry jacks, Belize’s version of a not-too-sweet doughnut. Off the open back porch where we were sitting flowed the Belize River, a prominent feature in the city, active with small fishing and delivery boats coming and going.  

Setting up the screen and banner for an outdoor video screening in Lemonal Village. 

The event in Lemonal didn’t get the whole community, but it did get maybe 40-50 people, which is a great percentage of the population, and it filled most the chairs and makeshift benches we’d set up. The night was beautiful, calm, cool, and not buggy, and so we were able to do it all outside in a field in front of the community center. As the evening came on, the crowd gathered. Kids piling in right up front, excited as much by the event as the display of technology. Parents filled the chairs, and out in the distance there was third ring of curious but non-commital passersby. 

The screening of Belize Audubon’s short informational video on the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary.

Day Two on the road was much easier (Day One, if you do the math, totaled about 16 hours of activities). We headed about a half hour south of Crooked Tree Village to the village of Biscayne for a school visit. We did three sessions that together included every kid in the school.

Photographer Jason Houston continues his journey in Belize at the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary.  There he meets Pride campaign manager Olivia Carballo-Avilez and begins to grasp some of her conservation challenges. 

Cows graze in a wetland near the edge of the lagoon—the same small swamp where local birders excitedly noted a sighting of an early-season Roseate Spoonbill.

Cows and conservation don’t usually mix very well. Put cows on an island surrounded by a delicate wetland ecosystem. Then add in a small, tight-knit, traditional community that explicitly states they “don’t like conservation”—that they see it as a repression of their rights to live on the land the way their families have for over 300 years—and, well, the challenges multiply.

All this, along with stories of village meetings ending in tire slashing and threats to run Belize Audubon Society (BAS) out of town and burn down the visitors’ center, and you can see why Olivia Carballo-Avilez was, as she told us the first day we met in her office, actually scared to work in Crooked Tree Village. This was the context we had going into today’s workshop, hosted by BAS and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) for a half dozen Crooked Tree cattle farmers. Passions run high on all sides — for the farmers whose livelihoods depend on decisions about their natural resources that often seem out of their control, and by conservation groups who want to find
 solutions that work for everyone involved.

Olivia leads off the workshop.

The idea for this meeting came about when Olivia saw studies of the current cattle management practices being endorsed by MAF. She recognized that while the motivation behind their use might be different than her motivation—that is, production and profitability versus stewardship of the land and more sustainable practices—the methods and environmental results the studies promoted were actually very much in line with what BAS is trying to accomplish in Crooked Tree. Techniques such as dietary supplements, pasture planning and rotation, and fencing animals will all improve the cows’ health and growth (improving profitability), and at the same time minimize the cattle’s impact on the wetlands, especially in the dry season when the cattle wander farther afield in search of food (improving sustainability). So the first of several planned informational meetings hosted by MAF and BAS was called.  

Vicente Tuyub, Livestock Extension Officer for the Belize District at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, shows Alden Wade how to make molasses block nutritional supplements.

Almost a dozen farmers showed up, a few to learn about these methods, others, it seemed, just to keep tabs on what Olivia and Belize Audubon were up to. The meeting was held at the house of a local farmer—Alden Wade, a younger farmer who’s been able to see the big picture and appreciate Olivia’s efforts for what they are while taking advantage of the collaborative relationship she’s offering.

Also there was Rudy Crawford, former Village Chairman for nearly two decades and an active leader of the community’s resistance to Audubon’s presence. Since the sanctuary was established in 1984, when Audubon was also charged with management, resentment towards BAS has run high in Crooked Tree. Rudy says he represents much of the community when he says that Audubon didn’t bring the birds; the birds have existed all along and for the last 300 years alongside Crooked Tree Village and still it was seen fit to designate the area a Wildlife Sanctuary. And it was designated for what it was, not specifically to address any threats. Villagers feel entitled to the land and don’t feel they need any help managing it. Audubon feels otherwise, and maintains that traditional practices don’t necessarily equal sustainable development. BAS can cite many examples of increasingly harmful agricultural practices and poorly planned development that make for new threats to the environment. It was a tense meeting at times, with occasional challenges from Rudy or the other older farmers to the ideas presented by Olivia and MAF—more, perhaps, to discredit her than to really challenge the practices, many of which they do or would do, given the opportunity.

But all in all, it was a calmer meeting than some we’ve heard about that happened in the past. Most confrontations were let go and a few were turned around into constructive discussions (for instance, Olivia got Rudy to tentatively agree to help lead a fencing workshop). And, luckily, no threats were made this time.

Rudy Crawford, left, and his nephew James listen to the presentation 

So more important than the few bits of information passed along is the fact that these meetings are getting a little easier. Just last year was perhaps the lowest point in the long relationship between Belize Audubon and Crooked Tree Village, when the community took it upon itself to build a second road across the opposite side of the lagoon (there is currently only one road on and off of the island). Villagers organized and collected money for fuel and borrowed bulldozers and other equipment. The first road, though legal, was not well planned. It impeded much of the natural flow for half of the lagoon’s drainage, and the environmental impact was dramatic.

The second road was even less well-planned, and illegal, and had it been completed it could have been a disaster for the entire lagoon. Audubon was able to halt the project until a proper environmental plan could be completed through the proper channels, but sacrificed a lot of community goodwill in the process. Since then, Olivia’s goal has been to rebuild a dialogue between BAS and Crooked Tree Village in any way possible. While this often means initially playing down conservation messages in favor of peace offerings in the form of useful practical information, she’s still working them in, if often to mostly skeptical audiences.

This will be a long process. It’s not merely a matter of ignorance or lack of alternatives here. A significant number of people here in Crooked Tree have a fundamentally different view of this community’s responsibility to the protected status of the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. The challenge will be to work in that context to truly balance the needs of people and nature even when all the parties don’t agree on exactly what that means. 

Olivia wraps up the workshop with a brief discussion about the conservation goals of Belize Audubon and how the practices presented can help farmers be more productive and while also helping protect the Sanctuary.

After visiting Rare alumnus Rafael Manzanero, photographer Jason Houston makes his second stop in Belize at Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary — site of a Pride campaign being run by Belize Audubon Society.

The bus to Crooked Tree

The second half of our visit to Belize takes us north into flatter land and the Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary. Here we are visiting the Pride campaign run by local conservationist Olivia Carballo-Avilez and Belize Audubon Society (BAS), with support from National Audubon Society.

After hitching a ride to Belize City with Derric Chan, Manager for Chiquibul National Park (see previous post), and checking in at the BAS office, we caught the slow bus north, heading back out to the countryside and our home for the next week.

The 16,000 acre Crooked Tree Wildlife Sanctuary (CTWS) is one of the world’s great birding destinations. The curvy cashew trees (where everything ‘Crooked Tree’ gets its name), scraggly savannah pine forests, and surrounding rivers and lagoon support nearly 30 species of mammals, 28 species of fish, and over 300 species of birds, including the Jabiru Stork, the largest bird in the Americas with a wingspan of over 8 feet. Crooked Tree was established as Belize’s first Wildlife Sanctuary in 1984 and has been a RAMSAR site since 1998. It was recently listed by Belize’s National Protected Area Plan in the top ten of 95 protected areas in the country, on account of its biodiversity. The Sanctuary is also home to Crooked Tree Village, which sits right smack in the middle of the protected area, on the large island in the main lagoon. Crooked Tree is the oldest village in Belize, founded in the early 1700s as the original source for indigo dye, which comes from the logwood tree. Today its 800 or so Creole inhabitants are mostly cattle farmers and fishermen. There are far fewer family names here than individual families, and everyone knows everyone. Indeed, most people here claim to be related to one another in some way, if you go far enough back. Pride in being distinctly from Crooked Tree runs deep in these self-proclaimed “Crooked Treeian Creoles”.

Sisters, fishing early in the morning with their family

Our bus arrived a couple hours after we began the alleged 45-minute drive from Belize City (the afternoon local buses also serve as the school buses), and dropped us at the crossroads of the main highway and the dirt causeway across the lagoon (and still several miles outside of Crooked Tree).

Leonard, a soft spoken Creole and expert birder from the small hotel where we are staying, met us at the junction, undeterred by our tardy transportation. The short drive into Crooked Tree took another half hour as we drove, literally, 5 mph the entire way. Belizean time, we were told, is about one hour behind when things are scheduled. Crooked Treeian time, we’re finding out, moves at an even slower pace.

A road in Crooked Tree Village

Tomorrow we join an agricultural workshop that is part of a collaboration between the Belize Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the Belize Audubon Society. The workshop’s goal is to teach alternative and improved practices that are better for the environment and also more cost-effective and profitable to Crooked Tree area cattle farmers.