Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
excavating rock for road-building. The site may be undergoing renovations; check at
your Orange Walk hotel or with one of the local tour companies (see p.76) about
visiting.
The Río Bravo Conservation and
Management Area
In the far northwest of Orange Walk District is the
Río Bravo Conservation and
Management Area
, an enormous tract of land - roughly 400 square miles - designated
for tropical forest conservation, research and sustainable-yield forest harvests. This
conservation success story actually began with a disastrous plan in the mid-1980s to
clear the forest, initially to fuel a wood-fired power station and later to provide
Coca-Cola with frost-free land to grow citrus crops. Environmentalists were alarmed,
and their strenuous objections forced Coca-Cola to drop the plan, though the forest
remained threatened by agriculture.
Following this, a project to save the forest by purchasing it - known as the
Programme for Belize
(PFB)
- was initiated by the Massachusetts Audubon Society and
launched in 1988. Funds were raised from corporate donors, conservation
organizations and an ambitious “adopt-an-acre” scheme, enthusiastically taken up by
schools and individuals in the UK and North America. Today, the PFB continues to
manage the Río Bravo area as a protected nature preserve, which also encompasses
dozens of Maya sites, many of them unexcavated.
he
landscape
ranges from forest-covered, limestone escarpments in the
northwest, near the Guatemalan border, to palmetto savannah, pine ridge and
swamp in the southeast, around the New River Lagoon. Crossing through the
middle of the region are several river valleys. The Río Bravo area has over 240
endemic tree species, and the forest teems with
wildlife
, including tapirs, monkeys
and all five of Belize's large cats, as well as four hundred bird species - almost ninety
percent of the country's total. The strict ban on hunting makes this one of the better
places in Belize to see these beasts; even pumas and jaguars, extremely reclusive
creatures, can be spotted. Wildlife-viewing is also excellent in the protected territory
around
Gallon Jug
, a private estate to the south of the Río Bravo area that's home to
the fabulous
Chan Chich Lodge
(see box opposite), regarded as one of the finest
eco-lodges in the Americas.
One of the aims of the PFB is environmental education; as such,
field stations
have
been built at
La Milpa
and
Hill Bank
to accommodate both visitors and students. Both
have thatched cabins and dorms, and also offer a range of activities, from early-
morning birding to rainforest treks.
2
La Milpa: the Field Station and Maya site
Set in a former
milpa
clearing in the higher, northwestern forest,
La Milpa Field Station
has a tranquil, studious atmosphere; deer feed contentedly around the cabins, grey
foxes slip silently through the long grass and vultures circle lazily overhead. There are
also binoculars and telescopes for spotting birds. A day-visit to the field station includes
a guided tour of La Milpa ruins or one of the trails.
Three miles west of the field station is the huge, Classic-period
Maya city of La Milpa
,
the third largest archeological site in Belize. After centuries of expansion, La Milpa was
abandoned in the ninth century, though Postclassic groups subsequently occupied the
site and the Maya here resisted both the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century and
British mahogany cutters in the nineteenth. Recent finds include major elite burials
with many jade grave goods. The
ceremonial centre
, built on top of a limestone ridge,
