Forest reigns

Published on Friday 31 March 2006 02:26

WE'VE ALL SEEN the depressing statistics: tropical rain forests cover 7 per cent of the world's surface, contain 50 per cent of its biodiversity, but are being laid waste by loggers, farmers and other human incursions at a rate of one and a half acres every second. In central America alone, annual deforestation stands at about 400,000 hectares; in Brazil, two million hectares disappear each year.

Yet the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RGBE) is involved in a Central American forest which is actually flourishing and, accustomed to the impact of Caribbean hurricanes and forest fires, regenerating from human impact. At last month's One Life Live "gap year" exhibition at London's Olympia, the Edinburgh garden, with help from TV survival expert Ray Mears, launched an "eco-tourism" venture to help protect the magnificent Chiquibul rainforest in Belize. With partners in the Belize Forest Department and other institutions, the RBGE is now inviting paying guests to visit its isolated Las Cuevas research station.

Belize hasn't always enjoyed the best of reputations. Formerly British Honduras, it was an unpopular posting for British servicemen, while the writer Aldous Huxley observed: "If the world had any ends, British Honduras would surely be one of them."

Chris Minty has experienced both sides. In the 1980s, during a brief spell in the RAF Regiment, the soil scientist - now the RBGE's project officer for Belize - found himself guarding an airstrip, bitten by what seemed like every insect under the sun and swearing never to return. Yet now he spends much of his time in the little republic, investigating plant-soil relationships in the Chiquibul forest, which is now recognised as a "biodiversity hot spot".

"While deforestation has devastated large areas of Central America during the past 50 years, in Belize the forest survives largely intact, providing one of the last sanctuaries for many endangered species - jaguars, tapir and howler monkeys, birds such as scarlet macaws and harpy eagles and plant species like mahogany and black orchids," says Minty. "The Chiquibul forest also provides Maya Indians with food, medicines and clean water."

The half million hectare Chiquibul Forest Reserve is part of the wider Maya Forest, which extends into Guatemala and as far south as Honduras, the largest intact tropical forest north of the Amazon. It also boasts a rich cultural history; one of the largest Mayan sites in central America is just 15km away from the Las Cuevas station - the name refers to caves used by the Mayans.

Outside Belize, the forest has been eroded by farming and logging. Chiquibul, however, is regenerating. "You're so often presented with doom and gloom scenarios with rainforest deforestation, but here is a forest which is recovering from these impacts," says Minty, also the executive director of the consortium of scientific interests which runs Las Cuevas, and of his own company, Maya Forest Enterprises.

The research station employs local people, and students on the MSc course run by the RBGE and Edinburgh University gain first-hand experience of fieldwork in a tropical forest.

Now the garden hopes to attract eco-tourists to stay at Las Cuevas and help. Enlisting Ray Mears was more than a publicity stunt, stresses Minty. "Ray's been tremendously supportive, and much of the work he's involved with, whether through his TV programmes or through his Woodlore bushcraft school, is publicising the very important knowledge that indigenous people have, and how valuable it is to conserve the natural environment. So he runs bushcraft courses in Belize."

Las Cuevas is no mint-on-the-pillow resort, but a visit can be a life-changing experience, says Professor Stephen Blackmore, regius keeper at the Botanic Garden. "There's too big a gap between what scientists get up to and the public being able to see it," he says. "One of the fascinating things about Las Cuevas is that, when we take people there, they tend to become very strong advocates for the place. One person we took out went very, very quiet, then told us it had been such a life-changing experience to see what tropical forests were really like, he felt he'd wasted his entire life until then."

That's an extreme reaction, but Las Cuevas can be a moving experience, says Blackmore. "All these people then become part of the voice, urging us to think differently about the future of these forests."

• For more information, visit www.mayaforest.com