7 News Belize

FCD: Enforcement Not As Simple As Should Be
posted (July 24, 2013)
And while discovery is one thing, enforcement is quite another. The rangers from Friends for Conservation and Development expend a great amount of time and resources to police the Chiquibul.

It is very difficult for them to actually capture the Guatemalans who are engaging in illegal activities, and when they do, it is not always a solid case that they can present against them in court.

Well, the FCD is reporting that even before they get to that stage, they encounter resistance from various government agencies.

The Executive Director explained how it is not as easy as one would think when trying to protect the national park after they've extracted the Guatemalans:

Rafael Manzanero - Executive Director, FCD
"We are really not well synchronized in terms of all the agencies - if you look at a Milpa like this it means that there was an infraction of illegal entry, it means that they are occupying a protected area which means under the National Parks Systems Act and the deforestation also falls either under the forest act or under the National System Parks Act. So we would assume that the regulatory agencies would be able really to uphold those particular rules and laws but at the end of the day we will need that synchronicity so that everybody would be able to do that particular tasking. For example if we take out a person out from here - we would require the assistance the of the Forest Department, Immigration Department - if there's a horse it will require BAHA to be involved - if it is inside of the Caracol Archaeological Reserve - it will require the Institute of Archaeology. If they actually brought any goods, chain saw or so then it would include customs so if you notice there are many players that need to be involved - now in reality that is where we don't really have the synchronicity. So at the time we feel that the institutions will be there to say 'this is the charge that we are going to place' and it might not really be that forthcoming. If it happens even inside or close by to the adjacency zone as known by Guatemalans - for us we know it as a border- for Guatemalans they think it's an adjacency zone and an adjacency line. For example here where a farmer from Guatemala would be captured and detained more than likely the OAS will be coming about only to verify after a call from Guatemala to verify if this is Belize or if this is Guatemala."

Daniel Ortiz
"And that adjacency zone complicates things."

Rafael Manzanero
"It complicates it very much because that is where - in fact many people will refer to it as a no man zone but for us it's a border. We know that any single inch inside the territory is already Belize so we should be able to uphold the law which means that we need to be much more bold and stronger and say that if we find you here we'll just take you out - of course understanding the human rights aspect of things and according to the law -they are supposed to be charged, processed in court and that is where the other issues arrives. Because let's say that we bring the GPS - that's the closest we can bring, we cannot bring in a part of the soil - it has to be shown on a GPS point/machine which reads that if you are 500 meters to the border and we send that to the court. The magistrates assume that this is a petty little thing - why even bother with this thing? We are saying that once you see this, of course we need really to worry and to be much more stronger and bolder to make sure that we can uphold the laws and we can successfully prosecute people in courts because that is the only way that we will really demonstrate that yes we are maintaining sovereignty of the territory and also uphold the laws in a National Park like this one."

Daniel Ortiz
"So if I understand you the authorities involved tend not to appreciate the devastation that is taking place and the damage that really is - to them they are seeing that it's just a person that came in and it's not such a big deal."

Rafael Manzanero
"I think that's why we have received the support from Channel 7 and from the media because we want to see how really they are going to bring the story home because a typical person from Belize City might say 'what are you talking about - the Milpa - that's a small thing'. But this one here was 67 acres - this is a big chunk of land that is gone and this thing will never come back to be the same - it will never appear so the area is already fragmented and like what I mentioned is that the impact is not only on the forest cover - it also has devastation on wildlife, sounds, creates fragmentation so that there is much more of a canopy opening. It changes the whole ecological process or the nature, the environment here is basically altered."

We'll have more from that trip to the Chiquibul in tomorrow's newscast.

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize