A Belizean Rain Forest: The Community Baboon Sanctuary - Softcover

Dr. Robert H. Horwich has been working in Belize since 1980, studying the black howler monkey and working on innovative approaches to Belizean conservation. A strong advocate of community-based conservation, he has been involved in projects in the U.S., Central America, Russia and India. Horwich resides in rural Gays Mills, Wisconsin. Dr. Jon Lyon received his Ph.D. in ecology from Penn State University in 1995. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arkansas and currently teaches at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. He has conducted plant ecology research in both temperate and tropical systems. He has worked on community conservation projects in Belize and North America since 1985.

Preface - The Community Baboon Sanctuary, an experiment in grass roots conservation, was one of the first such projects which planned and achieved true community empowerment. As with all such experiments, it has had its ups and downs, successes and problems. Its most important success, with its establishment in 1985, was to set the stage for a revolution in rural thinking about the environment. As a model, it stimulated a vitalization of rural Belizean communities focused upon taking control of their rural environments to conserve them for both themselves and the country as a whole. Following the lead of these 7 communities along the Belize River, other rural communities, with the support of the government and other conservation and social agencies, began to develop their own conservation and ecotourism programs in Belize to complement existing adjacent parks. This rural activism also led to the formation of new protected areas so that today they are forming the beginning of a community managed park system making Belize a leader in community conservation efforts.

This book about the sanctuary, which evolved from an 8 page booklet for rural farmers, is now in its third printing. It, too, has grown beyond original expectations, now becoming a textbook for students as well as for local people and visiting tourists. It describes the northern forest of Belize with examples which introduce the complexities of the tropical rain forest. It does this by combining general knowledge of the rain forests with specific information about Belize, using the Community Baboon Sanctuary area as an example which we have been researching. - March, 1998

From the Introduction:

Audubon Weekly - April, 1987. The Community Baboon Sanctuary: An Experiment in Grassroots Conservation.

The rural citizens of Belize are now conducting a small but significant experiment in wildlife conservation in the Bermudian Landing area along the Belize River. The area is not a sanctuary in the traditional or legal sense but one which is based on and depends on the rural people and their community government. Here, private landowners, many of them subsistence farmers, have voluntarily pledged to use their lands in accordance with a management plan which will benefit the black howler monkey and other wildlife, as well as the river and its forests. In turn, the program will benefit landowners by reducing erosion, conserving "the water table, and allowing more rapid replacement of the forest and its nutrients following slash-and-burn agriculture.

This community sanctuary is the first of its kind in the world, providing unlimited possibilities for similar community-based sanctuaries in Belize and other countries. Its establishment has already begun to influence conservationists throughout the world in such varied countries as Sierra Leone in Africa, Venezuela in South America, and Australia.

More than a dream come true, much more than a place to save a few monkeys...This community project has ricocheted all around the world, as a model that doesn't preach distance between man and conservation but sees conservation of the environment and wildlife for what it is, the conservation of mankind itself.--Hon. Dean Lindo, Minister of Agriculture, 1989