Photographer Jason Houston and writer William deBuys are on the long trip home from the island of Borneo after two weeks exploring the social, environmental, and economic components of one of the world’s most iconic conservation stories: deforestation and orangutans in Indonesia.

After returning to Pangkalan Bun in central Kalimantan, and cleaning up and charging batteries (electricity was only available in Tempayung for a few hours in the evenings), we made plans to spend our last full day in Borneo at Tanjung Puting and Camp Leaky, the heart of orangutan conservation and a place where there are still examples of somewhat pristine forests.

Tanjung Puting is one of Indonesia’s great treasures and an environmental success story. Yet like so much of the other forested areas in Borneo, Indonesia, and throughout the developing tropics, it remains critically threatened by legal and illegal extractive industries. The river into the park should be blackwater, naturally stained by the tannins leaching from the peat forests, but it flows light chocolate brown, polluted from gold and zircon mining upstream. And illegal logging continues in the more remote areas of the park, threatening some of Borneo’s last stands of primary forest.

Rare Pride campaign manager Eddy Santoso draws with children during a school visit.

In the coming year Yayorin will combine their existing skills and experience in education and community outreach with Rare’s Pride methodology to more strategically target the conservation needs of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. The forests of Lamandau are the focus of the European Union supported project “Promoting the conservation and sustainable management of the lowland forests of south Central Kalimantan” and it is currently the target of Yayorin’s Pride campaign.

Lamandau and the neighboring area that Yayorin, the Orangutan Foundation, Rare, and other partners hope to protect, with the help of a fast-developing international carbon trading market, are not pristine like Tanjung Puting. But the forest still stands in large enough pieces to be made viable for effective biodiversity conservation, and that leaves room for hope. The campaign will protect the forest that remains by rehabilitating adjacent areas where possible, and empowering the local communities to become beneficiaries of their own good stewardship of the forests they rely on. Yayorin and Rare believe that enough can be preserved and maintained to support the needs of both people of the forest and the orangutans.

Eddy talks with fellow Yayorin staff at a training as they prepare to survey a dozen target communities and six control communities around the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Their work, a fundamental step in a Rare Pride campaign, will establish a baseline of behaviors and values upon which to build the final campaign plan.

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Photographer Jason Houston and writer William deBuys visit several villages in Central Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo to learn more about the lives, motivations, and struggles of the people who live with and within the threatened forests.

*RP 100,000 is about US$10 – it’s the largest bill used in Indonesia.

Our second journey to inland Central Kalimantan on the island of Borneo led us to several small Dayak villages along the northern edge of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Having spent time in the reserve and surrounding forests to see the landscape and meet the local orangutans, we wanted to learn about the socio-economics and personal experiences of the people who depend most directly on the forest every day.

Travel began as it has many mornings: in a small speedboat departing from the crowded waterfront of Pangkalan Bun. And I say speedboat literally, and not “pretty fast” boat or “motor” boat. In our experience these boats are always driven at full throttle, whether on open water or snaking through the narrow, winding, log-jammed channels they call “short cuts.” I’ve not been to Italy, but Bill, who has, likened it to a “Roman taxi ride.”By late morning we’d landed at a filthy little wharf in the frontier-feeling town of Kotarwaringin. Former home of a sultan and home to one of the more impressive and older mosques in the area, this port town has become a major hub for shipping logs and palm oil downstream. Kotarwaringin has traded-in any sense of royal or religious pride that it once might have had in exchange for the fast cash of extractive industries. After a quick transfer from the boats to a truck (all while deflecting insistent motorbike taxi drivers and other locals hawking their services), we were on our way to the villages of Tempayung and Babual-Babuti.

The hour’s drive to Tampayung became a two-hour drive after we got stuck in knee deep mud while on a “short cut.”

Tempayung, where we’ll be based for the next few days, is a small village of about 800 people, mostly Dayak, living on the edges of the protected area of the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and surrounding forest—or, more accurately, remaining forest. Much of the forest has been converted to oil palm plantations. We came to see how people live; talk with them about their lives and relationships with the forest, and to see some of Yayorin’s various community projects already at work here. We met with craftsmen and village leaders, activists and farmers, oil palm workers, rubber tree tappers and others harvesting from the forest. Here’s a brief rundown of a few elements that make up the complex puzzle defining the lives of those who depend on these forests. All of this is at a time when populations and economic expectations are growing and the amount of viable, healthy forest is shrinking.

Oil Palm Plantations
In the majority of Borneo’s forests, the dominant economic force—and the most environmentally destructive one—is the oil palm industry. Small plantations can cover hundreds of hectares, while larger ones may spread over tens of thousands of hectares, or more. On the surface, oil palm plantations bring a significant increase in daily wages for the local populations, which at first glance appear to be a good thing; the average worker can go from subsistence farming to a daily wage of about US$3. But with that wage comes an increased need to buy many things that the now-vanished forest previously provided for “free.” Oil palm workers can no longer farm to produce their own food, and water supplies are depleted and fouled by the plantations. All of this requires workers and their families to spend their new-found money on survival, in ways they did not need to before the forest was cleared.

Pengli (above) can make about US$3/day picking oil palm fruits and tending the plantations between harvests, which provides for a very simple life that is just a step above subsistence. Through a complex leasing arrangement with the oil palm companies, landowners like Isar (below), make only about 50 percent more. In the process they bind their land to produce oil palm for 12 years, after which they gain full ownership of both the land and the trees. But by then the palm oil trees will be well beyond their prime production – which peaks at about 7-8 years–and the fragile tropical soil will be largely depleted, no longer suitable for other forms of farming.

Agriculture
The forests have been a resource for the people of Borneo for thousands of years, but as population grows and forested areas shrink, the traditional methods of shifting agriculture, or “slash-and-burn” farming, are no longer sustainable. Yayorin is working in Borneo’s communities and with local farmers to build demonstration gardens and to teach people about alternative, more sustainable agricultural practices referred to here as “intensive farming.” The idea is to use and reuse previously cleared areas, employing techniques such as maintaining local wells for water, composting for fertilizer, and planting nurseries for crop maintenance.

Using a previously burned, farmed, and abandoned area as a demonstration plot, Yayorin is showing the community how it is possible to continue farming season after season on the same small area of land. Such “intensive” practices reduce or eliminate the need to clear new land each period.

Emoy has been working with Yayorin for the last year-and-a-half to learn intensive farming practices. With little more than a machete and short-handled hoe, he’s planted corn, cucumbers and peppers for quick income; and banana, coconut, mango, and rubber trees for the long-term on about 1.5 ha of his 4ha farm in Babual-Babuti.

Forest Products
Forests also provide a variety of traditional products harvested by local people. As the forested areas become smaller and smaller, such harvests exert pressure on the ecosystem that is no longer sustainable.

Tongkat Ali, or Ali’s Cane, is thought to have medicinal qualities and increase sexual stamina.

Threatened hardwoods like ulin, or ironwood, are still used locally for such basic construction applications such as roofing shingles.

Mostly tapped by women, local rubber trees can provide a steady and sustainable source of income. Luparia taps 400 trees, harvesting up to 10kg of latex a day. That’s worth about $3/day after she pays the trees’ owner.

Handicrafts & Other Services
Retail services and handicrafts for local use make up most of the remaining economic activity in these small villages.

Fuel is sold in small quantities in plastic bottles in front of a roadside shop.

Rattan baskets, for rice and other household uses, are hand-woven by women in the villages. Each basket may take as long as two days to weave; it will sell for less than US$1. As the forests are cleared and converted to oil palm plantations, finding the rattan used in these crafts becomes increasingly difficult.

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Photographer Jason Houston and writer William deBuys head into the field to see the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and adjacent buffer zone.

Click here to view Jason’s Lamandau slide show!

My feet are stained yellow from tannins in the water and swollen red from multiple rounds of attack by fire ants. There’s a rash from an unidentified source on my neck, and the small wound where the leech was attached to my shin bleeds profusely each time it gets wet, which out here is all the time. I’ve learned to go to the bathroom without toilet paper (and know to greet and eat with only my right hand), and I now look forward to bathing in the dark, soft, highly-acidic, and relatively cool waters of the Rasau River. Yesterday we awoke to a chorus of hooting gibbons in the distance and, closer by, the raspy response of a flock of hornbills. Each evening ends with one of Borneo’s brief but colorful equatorial sunsets, chased by a lightning storm and followed by the steady drumming of another evening’s rain on the tin roofs.

We’ve spent the last four days boating and trekking through the lowland tropical forests and black-water swamps of Central Kalimantan. After two days in the main town of Pangkalan Bun talking with Hari Kushardanto (Rare’s Senior Pride Program Manager in Indonesia) and Togu Simorangkir and Eddy Santoso from Yayorin (Rare’s local partner in this effort), we began the first of two multi-day excursions into the field. Our goal is to see first-hand the conservation programs, issues, and challenges that make up the complex social and environmental conservation dynamics so common in areas like this, where the needs of people and nature are so inextricably intertwined.

Leading our travels was Stephen Brend of the Orangutan Foundation U.K., along with some of his staff and a ranger from the Central Kalimantan Forest Department. Our plan included visits to an orangutan release camp and several reserve guard posts throughout the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve to see the different landscapes of the protected area, as well as the critically important buffer zone all along its western border.

While the majority of the current biological conservation activities take place inside the boundaries of the protected area of the Reserve, it’s the buffer zone and the surrounding communities that are the primary concern and main focus of Yayorin’s upcoming Pride Campaign. As a potential habitat for orangutans, this buffer zone actually has more viable forest land than the reserve itself; finding some way to keep it natural could add as much as 25,000 ha to the current 54,000 ha of officially protected area. But the area is owned and controlled by the local government and threatened by several large proposed oil palm plantations.

Securing protected status is possible for a small portion of the buffer zone that is surrounded on three sides by the Reserve and could be added to it, but that’s not likely for the majority of the buffer area. If this landscape is to have a future as a healthy forest (and thus as a suitable habitat for orangutans and a sustaining resource for the local communities), that will require new or revived ways of valuing the land.

Since 2007, Yayorin and Orangutan Foundation have been working on the project “Promoting the conservation and sustainable management of the lowland forests of south Central Kalimantan” supported by funding from the European Union. Yayorin’s Pride Campaign in this area will build on the non-governmental organization’s experience providing education, awareness, and empowerment towards sustainable livelihoods. The campaign will focus on the support a healthy forest can provide a community. Also, it plans to coordinate within a larger collaborative framework involving other local and international non-governmental organizations known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).

Click here to view a captioned slide show of images from our visit to the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and the nearby buffer area.

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Photojournalist Jason Houston is on the road with writer William duBuys visiting the Pride site of Eddy Santoso in Borneo! Continue to follow Jason’s journey.  

We spent most of today doing a few video interviews with Togu, the Director of the conservation group Yayorin, and Eddy, the Pride campaign manager of the site. The rest of the day we planned and prepped for our four-day trek into the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and surrounding buffer zone.

Tasks included begging a permission letter from a local official and charging all of the batteries we can. We leave in the morning by boat, traveling several hours upriver to remote research camps with no electricity or other services. The excursion is to see the place this Pride campaign is working to save (and, with luck, some of the orangutans as well), but also to witness many of the threats the reserve faces. I’ll post a full report and lots of pictures when we return.

In the mean time, here, just for fun, are a few images of things we’ve eaten:

Dried fish laid out on the boardwalk above the river’s edge in Pangkalan Bun.

Fresh papaya from Yayorin’s demonstration gardens. A part of Yayorin’s mission is to share empowering knowledge with local communities, such as how to grow many different fruits and vegetables well and sustainably in Kalimantan’s poor, sandy soil (including such temperate crops as cabbage and strawberries!)

More dried fish in a local market stand.

 
Coconuts


Whole, deep-fried fish in a local restaurant.

Bananas


The mini-bar at the Blue Kecubung Hotel in Pangkalan Bun (where alcohol has been banned).

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Photographer and Orion magazine picture editor Jason Houston is traveling with writer William deBuys to Central Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) to visit Eddy Santoso and the conservation organization Yayorin. Santoso and his team are incorporating Rare Pride into their work to protect the orangutans and the forest habitat in and around the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve. Follow their adventures and share in their exploration of what goes into making a Pride campaign as Jason sends periodic blogs from the field—at least when he has electricity and an internet connection!

Eddy Santoso at Yayorin’s office in Pangkalan Bun

My journey began at 3:30am in the chilly northeast United States. Five flights later and after more than 30 hours in the air we arrived in Pangkalan Bun, on the southern edge of Borneo, the third-largest island in the world. I’ve been to some amazing places visiting Rare Pride programs around the world: the southernmost rainforests along Nicaragua’s Rio San Juan; high in the Ecuadorean Andes; the green hills of Kenya’s Rift Valley; Belize; Mexico; and the idyllic Seychelles. But I think this is the most exotic location yet. It’s certainly the farthest away. If it were a couple of dozen degrees farther south, I’d be almost exactly on the opposite side of the world from my home in Massachusetts.

Pangkalan Bun sits on the banks of the Arut River and is a central hub for the region. The streets are walkable, everyone is welcoming, and during sunset (which here on the equator goes from the first inklings of evening to darkness in maybe 20 minutes), the raised boardwalks and assorted floating docks along the river’s bank come alive with families washing, shopkeepers selling, fishermen returning, and all sorts of friendly socializing.

Evening on the Arut River in Pangkalan Bun

Pangkalan Bun is also the home base for Yayorin, Eddy Santoso’s organization and the host for this new Pride campaign. The target area is the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve and the adjacent buffer area. Together they make up a 77,000 ha area of peat swamp and lowland tropical forest that is home to some of Borneo’s amazing biodiversity, including proboscis monkeys, rhinoceros hornbills, crocodiles, sun bears, rare orchids, hundreds of bird species, and, of course, the legendary orangutan. Threats to this biodiversity include the clearing of land for subsistence agriculture, illegal logging, and some unsustainable or illegal hunting, fishing, and fuelwood collection. Larger threats on the horizon include proposals for industrial-scale oil palm plantations, which would mean clearing a significant majority of the buffer zone. (Demand for palm oil has skyrocketed as worldwide hunger for biofuels has grown.)

Togu Simorangkir, the Director of Yayorin, discusses some of the group’s programs, which include teaching alternative agroforestry. Yayorin has always focused on environmental awareness and community empowerment. Rare’s Pride program brings a more strategic methodology for working with target communities, along with new ways of measuring the effectiveness of programs.

One of the most interesting aspects for me in this ongoing series of site visits (this trip to Kalimantan is my eighth for Rare) is that each campaign is so different from the next. There are always different campaign managers with different backgrounds, and partner organizations of all sizes with a broad diversity of issues on their table and goals to achieve. In each case there is a different set of distinct issues within the local communities, and those are mixed in with the complexities of the ecosystems in which people live. And it’s always been interesting to me to see the adaptability of both Rare’s methodology and the campaign managers themselves as they attempt to pull it all together into an effective program.

But this campaign visit is different from the others I’ve seen in another, more fundamental way. At the previous seven sites I’ve visited, all the campaigns have been well-engaged in visible activities—the mascots, community outreach, and school visits we most readily associate with Pride. But Bill DeBuys and I are here to visit Eddy and Yayorin in Lamandau at the very beginning of their Pride campaign. We want to see what sort of place and situation merits Rare’s distinct brand of conservation, and witness some of what goes into actually getting a Pride campaign off the ground. Eddy returned from his Rare Pride university courses only recently and is just now working on his project plan. His preparations will build knowledge and inform the strategies that will shape the mascot’s songs, outreach posters, and community meetings, etc.—all designed to modify core values, lower behavioral barriers, and address the most urgent environmental issues.

Eddy’s notes and a copy of his concept model, or a flow chart of threats to his site, and his survey questions.Return to this blog in the coming weeks as Jason continues to share his observations and photographs about the early stage planning of a Pride campaign and his efforts  to protect the orangutans and the forest habitat in and around the Lamandau Wildlife Reserve.      
                                                                                                                       
  

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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.

Jason Houston is a freelance photographer and picture editor at Orion magazine. Over the past two-and-a-half years, he has visited five Rare Pride campaign sites. (View previous blog posts.) This month he is exploring conservation campaigns in Belize, traveling with environmental journalist and High Country News contributing editor Matt Jenkins.

From atop the great Mayan temple at Caracol National Monument, Rafael Manzanero looks to the Belize/Guatemalan border. 

Belize is well-known as one of the world’s top ecotourism destinations among those seeking outdoor adventure and pristine nature. And though it’s one of the smallest countries in the Americas, it holds numerous areas of incredible biodiversity and ecological importance—a significant portion of which are set aside as designated protected areas. The area we’re visiting in the first part of our trip to Belize is Chiquibul National Park in the northern portion of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor — one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. And who better to have as our host than a leader in Belizean conservation, and an alumnus of Rare’s training program, Rafael Manzanero. With Raf and his team at Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD), we are in good hands.

In addition to running one of the first ever Rare Pride campaigns in 1993, Raf has built a 20-year career in conservation. To bring everyone up to speed: He began in environmental education at the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center, where he pioneered environmental education programs and school curricula nationwide. After the zoo he worked in the Forest Department of Belize, where he ran one of the early Pride campaigns (visiting, literally, every school in Belize with his conservation message), and then later as an officer for the Forest Department, helping to facilitate the consolidation of a national park system for Belize. He then worked for Rare for nearly 10 years, mentoring conservation campaigns and adding much-needed capacity to the Pride program in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Along the way he founded several NGOs, the first when he was just 19 years old, and the second, Friends for Conservation and Development, which he has led as director for over a decade. Through FDC, Rafael continues to use Pride and other methodologies to instill a conservation ethic in this important corner of the world.

Friends for Conservation and Development’s current work is primarily focused on the Chiquibul National Park. This is the largest protected area in Belize and part of a vitally important system of 14 contiguous protected areas. It is incredibly remote (there are still significant unmapped areas of dense jungle and steep terrain), yet it is also threatened from all sides. On the west, along the Guatemalan border, the park is threatened by unsustainable farming and forest harvesting practices. In Belize it is threatened (though to a lesser extent) by the encroachment of various illegal and unsustainable practices in rural communities as they expand through the buffer zones toward the park’s boundaries.  Rafael’s challenges are great, and involve coordinating his efforts with multiple governmental organizations and other partner organizations, all in the midst of complex cross border politics in a truly wild, often nearly impenetrable corner of this small country.

Visiting Rafael and his staff at FCD was an amazing experience. The programs are innovative and comprehensive, the dedication of all ten employees is inspiring, and every moment was filled with a generous sharing of insights and observations from the wide range of perspectives of his staff, their partners, and the local communities themselves.

A major part of our visit focused on a Rare Alumni Fund-supported campaign to engage local communities in the protection of the water resources in the Chiquibul-Maya Mountains, the headwaters for more than half of Belize’s water supply. Running this outreach program is FCD’s newest staff member, Environmental Educator Pedro Chan. While the immediate threats to the Chiquibul National Park from the Belizean communities are much less acute than those posed by illegal settlers along the Guatemalan border, this effort fits squarely in Rafael’s ’system’ approach to conservation. This is something he refers to frequently and which essentially means stepping back during the planning phase and looking at both short-term and long-term goals, and all the different variables that need to be in place for them to work. The problems along the border have become so bad that they need to be dealt with through direct enforcement of rules and regulation, and often conflict can even become violent. FCD’s goals in this campaign are to establish a conservation ethic in the Belizean communities in the buffer zones around the towns and villages before they find themselves simply addressing problems, and while such a shift in perspective can still help guide sustainable community development. Consistent with this system strategy is Rafael’s generous patience and willingness to train and trust his people. Numerous times throughout our visit his staff members were given the unqualified opportunity to explain to us their areas of responsibility and show the leadership—and pride in their work—that it will take for them all to succeed in the challenging tasks they face protecting one of the most special natural areas in the world.

The Chiquibul-Maya Mountains campaign message competes with heavy hitters in the marketing world—Hannah Montana and Coca-Cola—on a store front in San Jose Succotz.

The timing of our visit aligned with several of Pedro’s first school presentations. The first was done together with Rafael’s mentoring, then the second, to this large crowd of children at Eden Primary School in Santa Elena, Pedro completed entirely on his own.


Competing with attitude and adolescence for high-schoolers’ attention requires a mix of information and involvement. Pitting boys against girls in a trivia contest based on his presentation engaged the entire room of several hundred students at Eden High School in Santa Elena.

Eliodoro Perez, head of the newly formed Cayo Quality Honey Producers Cooperative, loves his bees with passion. He is working with FCD to share his knowledge and enthusiasm with others in the forest buffer zones who are interested in shifting to bee keeping as a more environmentally sustainable—and financially lucrative—alternative livelihood. Adding this sort of practical benefit to adult community meetings encourages those who are more skeptical to attend. Once there, they also hear the campaign’s conservation messages.

Another goal of the campaign is to educate the community about, and involve members in support of, an environmental service fee to be paid by utility companies and others using the forest resources. The first step is securing 3,000 signatures from people in the 22 communities in the Chiquibul-Maya Mountain region.