(Excerpt)

“Where are the macaws?” cries Sharon Matola
as she scans the tall green palms along the banks of the Macal river.
“In the 10 years that I have been coming here, this is the worst it has
been. Normally I see dozens of birds. Now there is nothing. It can only
be one thing. The blasting at the dam has scared them away.” After two
days kayaking up the Macal with Matola, the director of Belize Zoo and world expert on Ara cyanoptera, a sub-species of the scarlet macaw, it is clear something is very wrong.

Not only have the macaws disappeared, but so has almost all the other wildlife she has been studying for a decade.

“This part of the river is so remote that I would expect to see otters,
crocodiles and at least a dozen tapir. The fact that we haven’t seen
anything is very worrying. It means that the fauna is being pushed back
into a smaller area where it will be harder to find food,” says Matola.