Conservation at Belize Lodge

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Boden Creek Ecological Preserve - Golden Stream, Toledo District, Belize

Belize Lodge & Excursions Limited (BLE) is a multifaceted eco-enterprise company located in an environmentally sensitive and biologically rich area and is designed to promote travel and low-impact ecotourism, conservation and sustainable land use in the region. The Company’s core business is operating a series of four unique lodges located in different habitat settings of southern Belize, Central America. BLE provides a select offering of ecotourism excursions within the Boden Creek Ecological Preserve (BCEP), Golden Stream Corridor Preserve, Port Honduras Marine Reserve, Sapodilla Cays Marine Reserve, and the surrounding Toledo District and, with our “Overland Tour Division”, throughout Belize as a whole.

The Boden Creek Ecological Preserve is a private reserve made up of 13,600 acres of lowland tropical broadleaf forest owned and operated by BLE. BLE is committed to sustainable land use through ecotourism and sound conservation management practices of wildlife and forest resources. Through the establishment of the BCEP, BLE has contributed to the overall preservation of tropical rainforest ecosystems by protecting a highly endangered and threatened habitat containing many vulnerable plant and animal species. BLE provides sustainable economic alternatives to biodiversity destruction and acts as responsible stewards of wildlife, forest, river, coastal, and other natural resources.

The overall BLE project, of sustainable well managed land use, provides precious job opportunities to the surrounding Maya communities and helps develop valuable skills through extensive job training in ecotourism services, and wildlife and forest management enterprises. BLE, a private sector company, is currently the largest employers in the southern Toledo District and provides meaningful employment and significant increases in household income to the indigenous people. At the same time BLE is working towards developing better local understanding of conservation and environmental issues and provides alternatives to destructive slash and burn agricultural practices and hunting.

Conventional business practices, especially is areas of high biodiversity, have historically led to the assimilation and subsequent disappearance of traditional ways of life that had been in harmony with locals environments for centuries. BLE’s eco-enterprise activities of ecotourism, conservation and sustainable land use, integrate community-based development and participation through effective natural resource management and by providing direct employment opportunities to the surrounding indigenous people.

The Toledo District is Belize’s southernmost and poorest region, yet has the greatest ecotourism and biodiversity potential because of it’s vast areas of undisturbed habitat, high concentration of protected areas, low population density and cultural history. The Boden Creek Ecological Preserve itself contains tremendous biodiversity and had been slated for logging and commercial agricultural development until it’s purchase in 1998 by BLE. In addition to acquiring 13,600 acres of critical habitat on the Golden Stream, BLE helped set up and partly finance the non-profit land conservation trust -the Golden Stream Corridor Preserve (GSCP) -- which has acquired 15,150 acres along the other side of Golden Stream and south of BLE’s property. Together, these two properties (BLE and GSCP parcels) anchor a 12-mile habitat corridor that protects the last remaining tropical forests connecting the mountains to the coast in Belize. This corridor represents a critical area of biodiversity that provides one of the only crucial geographical links between the marine environment and the larger protected terrestrial areas of Belize that form the south-eastern part of the greater Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC).

The MBC is one of the world’s largest conservation initiatives focusing on countries in Central America from Mexico to Panama. The isthmus of Central America covers only 0.5% of the world’s land area yet contains 5% of all known biodiversity. The aim of the MBC is to create ecological corridors that provide freedom of movement for animals and facilitate genetic exchange of species. The region is home to numerous indigenous people whose livelihood is inextricably linked with the natural environment and their involvement in the program is being encouraged to ensure that issues such as rural poverty and sustainable development are fully considered.

GSCP in 2000 changed their name to Yaxche Conservation Trust and is sponsored by Fauna and Flora International (FFI), which is based in the United Kingdom. FFI’s “Arcadia Fund” created in 1998, works to secure the future of land with globally significant biodiversity by establishing protected areas through direct land purchase. In late 1998, with help from BLE, FFI through their Arcadia Fund made its first purchase of threatened land, the Golden Stream Corridor Preserve.

FFI has completed an extensive biodiversity assessment of the GSCP and BCEP properties and confirms the extraordinary biodiversity of the area. The Golden Stream watershed conservation value transcends its intrinsic importance as a haven of biodiversity. BLE’s intervention not only saved these lands from timber extraction, conversion to citrus plantations and shrimp farming, but also safeguards the core area of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve (PHMR) into which the Golden Stream flows. BLE, FFI and YCT have also collaborated with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and its counterpart conservation NGO (TIDE) in southern Belize to explore the potential for acquiring additional private lands and linking their efforts to protect more of the watershed of the PHMR. TIDE currently manages the (PHMR) and Payne's Creek National Park which makes up a large part of the coastal and marine environments of the region within the biological corridor.

In August of 2001 another large parcel (12,000 acres) of land within the Golden Stream watershed came under protection through a Debt-for-Nature Swap with the United States and the Government of Belize. The US will forgive debts of Belize in exchange for setting aside government lands and putting them under protected status. One of these areas is Government Block 127 located south of the GSCP parcel, it completes the corridor link along the eastern bank of the Golden Stream to the coast and comprises over seven miles of coastal mangrove habitat in the PHMR. This coastal environment contains numerous rare and endangered species including important breeding habitat for the highly threatened West Indian Manatee. TIDE and YCT are expected to co-manage the block as part of the Golden Stream Corridor Preserve and the Port Honduras Marine Reserve.

The Boden Creek Ecological Preserve is located within the Golden Stream Watershed an area of nearly flat coastal lowland tropical broad leaf forest situated between the karstic foothills of the Maya Mountains, and the coastal mangrove forests and marine island habitat of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve. Lowland tropical broad leaf forests historically, covered an area along the Caribbean coast of Central America stretching from southern Belize to Panama. Today however, it is one of the most threatened tropical forests in Central America with only two remnant patches still somewhat intact.

The first is in southern Nicaragua in an area known as the Mosquito Coast. This forest is fairly large but isolated from other habitat types and does not link to other biologically rich areas because of heavy agricultural development that surrounds the region. The second large area is in southern Belize and represents the best example of this forest type. Important, as well, is the fact that this region forms a corridor between the coastal environment and the larger protected areas of the Maya Mountains and the tropical forests that extend into the Peten of Guatemala, thus forming an important and critical part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.

The Golden Stream Watershed flows into the Port of Honduras and is comprised of roughly 200,000 acres of coastal lowland forests running from the foothills to the coastal mangrove swamps. The Boden Creek forms as it runs out of the kastic foothill and cuts across the coastal plain about mid way between the foothills and the coast before reaching Golden Stream. Relatively flat a variety of tree species thrive including valuable hardwoods, 36 palm species and my tropical plants, bromilliads and orchids. The forest is teaming with jaguar, tapir, howler monkey, gibnut and many other rare and endangered animal species.

Belize Lodge & Excursions Limited operates the 13,600 areas BCEP as a private reserve and supports its operation through a variety of sustainable land use practices such as ecotourism, reforestation and agro forestry programs. Through a comprehensive natural resource management plan the BCEP preserves valuable habitat while providing an economic rate of return to the local communities through direct employment, as well as, to BLE’s investors.