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. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 8:02 pm and is filed under General, Pride. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.