Satellite images, rosewood and neighbors

I start this blog entry with a satellite image. Well, with news also: we have another Spaniard in our team! His name is Jaume, he is from Barcelona and he was here last year working as GIS technician, and he has come back to do the same for a longer period (my god, how much did I need those skills in my project!). And this picture is his first output, after a single day of work( damm, he's good).

This pictuee was taken this year, and we can see many things on it. In red, the boundaries of Belize and its districts, as well as the islands of the cayes. In blue is the Maya Golden Landscape, our working focus area. In the sea, we can see the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second biggest in the world. But that's not the point. The country that borders with Belize is Guatemala in most of the line and Mexico in the North, and Honduras is visible in the lower right corner. You can see that the color of the terrain out of the boundaries is of a light green, in opposition to the dark green inside Belize. The former corresponds with agricultural land, pastures and clearing of the forests, whereas the later are extensions of more or less intact tropical forest.

Briefing: Guatemala, due mainly to its high population density, strong pressure on natural resources and lack of regulations suffers a very high deforestation rate, whereas Belize, mainly due to a ridiculously small population (compared with neighboring countries) still maintains much of its natural vegetation cover. And that is what makes it so relevant for biodiversity and conservation. This is that much, that in the image without lines, you can tell where the border between these countries is just looking ant the color change!

Next issue: the hottest topic in environmental issues during the last months was the accelerated exploitation of rosewood, to sell mainly to the Asiatic market, hungry of all kind of precious timber and animal products (let's not mention ivory and rhino horn...). Rosewood and other kinds of timber have traditionally been a part of the economy of Belize, but the situation had evolved in a pillage of the kind "take as much as you can, as fast as you can", wich was deplenissing the stocks and natural population of a species with a very limited distribution range (only Belize and reduced areas in neighboring countries) and of which very few was known.

Ya'axché was advocating for a moratorium in the extraction, until a population assessment were performed and a management plan put in place. Pretty much unsuccessfully, as there are too many fat cats involved in this business. Until this week. The new minister Alamilla (our ex-Executive Director), as a first measure of her mandate, has proclaimed the moratorium! That's a wonderful beginning! Will se be allowed to do things the right way for the full 4 years? We will see...

And for saying goodbye, I want to remark that in PG there are tons of dogs... they are simply all around the place, and most of the times very friendly. And yesterday I discovered we have four new neighbors in our house!

New puppies!