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And so, on Friday, special correspondent Janelle Chanona and Cameraman Codie Norales left out before dawn to head into the wilds of Chiquibul. Tonight, they'll take us to areas where no camera has been before in part one of a two part series on the Ceibo Chico and the grueling journey to get there. Janelle Chanona reports:

Janelle Chanona Reporting

In any other part of Belize, a tractor is a standard piece of farm equipment. But in the Chiquibul Forest, it's a life line. The machine has turned a gruelling two day hike into an arduous six hour journey.

Every two weeks, members of the Belize Defence Force, police officers and park rangers from the environmental group Friends for Conservation and Development, pile into the tractor's trailer and travel from Tapir Camp to the Ciebo Chico Conservation Post in the Chiquibul National Park.

Derrick Chan - Ranger, Friends for Conservation and Development
"Same distance from Belize City to Belmopan would take you 40 minutes. Here it takes us six hours because it's really bad."

Bad is actually the understatement of the year. Even the considerable horsepower of the John Deere-code name "Jumping Viper"- is no match for formidable features of the Chiquibul in the wet season. Three times the mud stops us in our tracks. And when winching isn't even enough, we have to resort to pushing.

The trip is an adventure for visitors but this is the hard-core reality for the members of the South Chiquibul Enforcement Unit stationed at the Ciebo Chico Conservation Post.

The location is certainly the edge of Belize but this is the frontline of the war against illegal activity.

Lieutenant G. Gonzalez - Soldier, BDF
"Our main task here at Ciebo Chico is to deter the xateros who are conducting gold panning in the area, which has been the most recent thing that has been happening out here. Apart from that, we still cover the xate leaves, illegal logging, and legal hunting."

Run-ins between the perpetrators of the illegal activity and the Belizean military are tense at best. In 2012, one encounter, which coincidentally occurred less than a ½ mile from the Ciebo Chico outpost, became an international incident when it resulted in a Guatemalan fatality.

Within such life and death scenarios, security is a 24 hour concern that weighs heavily on the minds of the men

Jose Guzman - Soldier, Belize Defence Force
"Mostly, they are Guatemalan civilians who cross the border and come to Belize. Most of them have a military background. Some of them are very dangerous-armed with high powered weapons. If our lives get endangered, and the threat of loss of life is high, anybody would do the same thing. Your life comes first. We are in Belize. They are coming come cross here. We are the only people out here. This is a job, and somebody has to do it. We are the ones out here."

Lieutenant G. Gonzalez
"We are here by ourselves. We just 6 soldiers here and, nearest friendly forces we have is about 4 or 5 hours hike light weight. That is at Rio Blanco CP. Apart from that, we don't have any other friendly forces, maybe at Tapir Camp. You see that the road is about a 6 hour's tractor ride. So, during the day, we have the persons providing security. That's just observation up to 200 - 500 yards. That's basically all around that we can see. At night time, we have 2 sentries minding the OP while the rest are taking a rest, and then we rotate the shifts."

P.C. Allistair Casey - Special Patrol Unit
"The Guatemalans are brave people. Our security is always on 24-hour high alert, out here."

But if park rangers felt that the xateros were being brave before, to venture so far into Belize to collect the xate palm, they are all too aware of the lengths these people will go to collect a far greater commodity-gold. Despite the presence of Belizean military and police officials in this area, patrols often find signs of illegal mining along the Ciebo Chico Creek.

Derrick Chan
"They just felt ownership of the place. We started speaking to them. They wouldn't respond that. They are needy people so they will take all opportunity that they can get to."

And to get to the valuable mineral, the illegal miners carve huge chunks out of the banks of the creeks, creating significant erosion; not to mention extracting notable amounts of the resource.

Desperate to stop the gold rush, and curb illegal activity on a whole, FCD put together the multi-agency unit and with funding from the Protected Areas Conservation Trust, established the Ciebo Chico outpost in July 2012.

Derrick Chan
"We immediately bumped into a lot of them-groups of 30. We would call them together and speak to them and tell them, "Leave now." Make sure they pack up; destroy camps; whatever we can and whatever they can take and they were leaving. In July, like 2nd or 3rd week, we came back and whoever we found here, we arrested them."

After six months of operation, co-managers say constant presence at Ciebo Chico is making a positive difference in the three major threats: illegal logging, xate harvesting and gold mining.

Rafael Manzanero - Executive Director, Friends for Conservation and Development
"We have learnt more about how these people operate. We have been able to detain people. We have been able to intervene in many of these activities. But the sheer number of people that we find along the Western Border from the Guatemalan communities is of course, a lot so it's really a complicated issue. We started to look at the number of people from those communities that are actively engaged in illegal activities."

Derrick Chan
"We look at a tree and say, 'what a beautiful tree, birds, etc.' While if you are needy, you look at a tree and see, that's 2000 board feet of lumber and cut it. So we will have those problems so long as on the other side we have poverty."

Rafael Manzanero
"We need to be much bolder; much more forceful in terms of implementation of the law; learn much more about evidence taking; ensure more mechanisms in place of how to also be successful in court in terms of detaining, and processing people in court."

And while FCD is concentrating on enforcing Belize's laws, the organization is also partnering with Guatemalan counter-parts to support environmental awareness campaigns, promote alternative livelihoods and regulate the movement of resources across the border.

Rafael Manzanero
"A lot of people might tend to believe that the Chiquibul is a forest under siege alone. But somehow we lose the fact of why it is important to maintain it as a part of our country in terms of its integrity and stability."

Tune in next week for the second part of this series where Janelle looks into the natural and manmade difficulties of managing this embattled area.