Meb Cutlack
The Reporter (Belize)
April 5, 2001

It is too easy to dismiss the almost total loss of the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, now acknowledged by government, as an unfortunate accident. The Southern Pine Bark Beetle has destroyed some 90% of what was once a model forest and the rest is under seige. The Forest Department is so undermanned that it cannot cope with the crisis. This crisis means, according to logging sources, that within 5 years there will be virtually NO timber resources left in Belize. Now, also at risk today from fire and erosion, is the vital watershed of the area which not only serves communities along the Macal and Belize Rivers but provides Belize City with fresh water. What has happened is an expensive disaster that will take Belize 30 years or more, and certainly millions of dollars, to recover from – if indeed recovery is possible!

Think of it as a detective mystery and it’s easy to unravel what has happened. In 1990, the Mountain Pine Ridge was considered a model forest for the whole of Central America. The forest earned its reputation because it was sustainable, easily accessed by service roads, regularly thinned, kept clean of under-brush, and well supervised by foresters. Any problem to the young forest was easily identified and combated, as and when it first appeared. Then fate – or, more precisely, ignorance, stupidity and/or greed – struck. In 1995 the minister responsible for forestry, the then Minister of Natural Resources, Dito Juan, retrenched nearly 80% of Belize’s Pine Ridge forestry workers, leaving something like just 20 forest officers where there had been a work force of over 120. Although, when it came to power in 1998 the governemnt promised a revitalized forest service, this has yet to happen. Today there are just 8 permanent forest oficers and 36 six others – inluding forest guards.

Over the past two weeks two crisis meetings of concerned ciizens in Cayo, addressed by Forest Officer Angel Chun, have heard the full extent of the disaster and what went wrong.

Yes, many natural factors such as hotter weather and hurricane Keith contributed to the southern bark beetles rampage but years of undermanning and the cutting of undersized trees meant that the forest also lost all pretence of any longer being a sustainable forest. The unsupervised forest without manpower quickly degenerated into a wild forest with lack of vital thinning, access roads allowed to wash away, erosion unsupervised, under-growth out of control and, within a short period, knowledge of what was happening within the forest, a mystery. The forest became unhealthy and, like an unhealthy person, subject to attack from every sort of passing infection. Diseases such as the Southern Pine Bark Beetle occur in nearly all forests BUT a healthy and supervised forest can, with control, rid itself of them quickly. By 2000, when the beetle hit the Mountain Pine Ridge with a vengeance, it had already been cruising around areas of the forest for more than three years. It had been identified by numerous forest-wise experts as a potentially devastating infestation but this information was ignored by the top echelons of government. Some infected areas had become totally inaccessible. It was only a matter of time before the infestation escalated into the disaster it is today.

Add to this the loss of the lush jungle forests which once skirted the Southern Highway from Bladden to Punta Gorda but which now resemble moon landscape and then the true extent of Minister Juan’s self-interest becomes all too apparent. Along this roadway, and reaching to the mountains, he allowed illegal clear-cutting, suppposedly for, agriculural purposes – to feed the Malaysian timber mill! There’s certainly no sign of new agriculture! Meanwhile, throughout Belize, a lot of this cutting on “vouchers” is still taking place.

Here then is the source of the Pine Ridge disaster and the person ultimately responsible. BUT, what to do about it? The answer is not a pretty one. Belizeans are powerless, under the presently accepted system of governance, to ever bring to justice a minister or his cohorts for irregularities that can cost tax-payers and citizens millions of dollars. Ministers of this and previous governments are so well protected against prosecution for virtually ANY financial misdeeds that they commit while in office that it is as though they have the vote-given RIGHT to take advantage of their power; in the extreme, this could be considered as a form of legalized crime. They can buy and resell government cars at a profit, they can flog off their department’s assets, they can vote themselves funding that is never questioned or accounted for, they can spend lavishly and NOBODY can deny them or question them. There were measures promised to curb these powers by this present government but, to date, they have not been given anything but lip service.

Today in Belize this government could be on much the same collision course with the Constitution (designed to project the patrimony of all Belizeans), that Dito Juan’s UDP government was. Take the Department of the Environment. This ministry has had its budget cut almost to the point of oblivion. The implication of this is that the department’s officers are in much the same position that Dito Juan’s forestry officers were. In fact, Belize as a whole is in much the same situation that the Mountain Pine Ridge was under Dito. The no longer independent and now emasculated Department of the Environment is so unmanned that some of the most precious areas of Belize are not just under threat but they are now under attack!

There are many laws on Belize’s books designed to protect Belize’s extremely precious and delicate natural environment. Among these laws are those which protect Belize’s rivers the length and breadth of the country. These laws stipulate that a wide band of growth be left along ALL riversides to protect against soil erosion. Any river trip will reveal what is happening. The Ruta Maya canoe race showed dramatically lack of supervision of the laws along the banks of the Belize River. Rivers countrywide illustrate this same lack of overview.

It is understandable that a government which today seems intent on development at whatever cost to the environment – and often this development offering little proof of benfit to anyone but a few – is understandably annoyed at environmentalists who stand in it’s way. But this can hardly justify allowing the Department of the Environment to become no more than a name on the books. The loss of this department as a versitile watchdog places the entire nation in jeopardy.

Today there is one very precious river which government should urgently take action over because, if they don’t, it will be a “beetle bark” situation all over again: too little, too late! The Moho River in Toledo runs from near the Guatemalan border to the sea just south of Punta Gorda Town. It passes a number of Mayan villages AND, along its route, creates dramatic rapids, tumbling waterfalls, long scenic intervals of beautiful ponds and lagoons, and passes every conceivable form of jungle flora imaginable. Its banks teem with all manner of bird and animal wildlife. It is a natural wonderland with an eco-tourism potential pretty well unmatched – even in Belize. It could support white water rafting, canoeing, kayaking, riverside camping and jungle trails. The river has been described to me, by a world experienced river-man, as one of the most extraordinary adventure rivers in Central America. The riverbanks, and therefore eventually the whole river itself, are now under threat from unsupervised clearing. The area, including both banks of the river, urgently needs a supervisory plan.

The Toledo Ecotourism Association’s Eco Park program would perfectly safeguard and enhance the Moho’s potential and, at the same time, bring in the local Mayan villages as guides and guards of this precious Belizean treasure – a treasure, by the way, which is an extraordinarily rich inheritance that belongs to all Belizeans but which, if neglected, will degenerate into a drain of the sort that you see in the Banana Belt, of no use to anyone, certainly without any earning capacity to pass on through tourism to the whole of Belize.

What lies at the core of so many of Belize’s problems is not just the stupidity or greed of some of its politicians but also the very structure of financing in Belize. Neither government ministries nor departments have budgets that truly reflect their constitutional duties. Too often ministers and top civil servants have to go cap in hand to beg from Belize’s all-powerful treasurer. We have seen it time and time again where true priority and need are subverted to favoritism and expediency. It comes down to how low ministers and others are prepared to stoop to beg funds for their needs. What this leads to is a cavalier attitude about how the money is spent when it reaches the hands of individual ministers.

NB. Chief Forest officer, Oswald Sabido, acknowledged to me that his department is severely undermanned particularly considering that Foestry not only has the responsibility of forest care but is also responsible for protested areas throughout the country, for forest policing in remote areas and for rural fire watch throughout Belize. He acknowledged that there was a considerable increase in illegal logging using power saws to cut and remove lumber and that this was taking place throughout the country and was diffficult to control.