Protecting The Maya Bioreserve
Why we need to protect and restore The Maya Forests
The Maya Biosphere Reserve is vulnerable to deforestation due to its geographical positioning along a major drug smuggling route. Narcotraffickers are known to clear the forest to use as a landing zone on their journey from South America to Mexico and the US. The forest is also extrememy vunerable to the agriculture sector who want to turn it into cattle pastures and a number of other industries, including the cement, telecoms and tourism trades, have their eyes set on the reserve with its rich resources and land ripe for development.
We have been working with The Maya Community in Belize to turn back degraded monocultures & cattle ranches into diverse agroforestry system that The Maya people have been using for thousands of years. These systems bring fertility back to the soil & provide a habitat to the range of diverse species that live within the biosphere. With support from our members we are able to continue this work & expand it, securing more land to regenerate back into forests again.
Narciso, Maya Elder & Medicinal Plant Expert
“I have been working for the last 50 years transforming & restoring deforested & degraded pastures to bring it back the maya food forests, that my ancestors planted for us thousands of years ago.”
Learn more about Narciso and his work in this video…