Email

Print

Xate – it’s that most vexing and much sought after ornamental palm that grows abundantly within the Chiquibul National Park – and is relentlessly and illegally extracted by Guatemalan Xateros. So today we jumped at the opportunity to see first hand a Xatero camp in the deep inside the Chiquibul National Park. Except we didn’t find militant Guatemalans ready to fight to defend their illegal extraction – instead we found a group of four chilling under shade and in hammocks when we showed up with rangers from friends of conservation and development.

First reason being, they had no Xate at the camp, and the second more important reason, because they are legally extracting the plant under a concessions granted to a Belizean. So the Belizean hires Guatemalan workers – because who else wants to do the job? And they freely move and extract within a protected area. It should be managed and monitored extraction, but it’s definitely not. When we visited today at the far reaches of the Raspaculo River in the far reaches of Chiquibul, we found an operation operating on autopilot, with Guatemalan Xateros self-regulating the operations for all we could tell.

Rafael Manzanero, Executive Director – FCD
“I would really want Belize t find out indeed if the monitoring goes. If it occurs, if really know who are operating back here, the names of the individuals, what they are doing, which area they are working in and all these things are to a large extent indicated within the concession and the permit. If it happens, that is another story. I would want to believe that only seeing young kids in this camp, it gives indication to me that this is something even within the context of the laws of Belize that it is not really permissible to have young little kids operating under a particular permit. So that brings a lot of questions to me, if people really know, if the authorities know who are actually operating under these kinds of permits.”

Andrew Lopez, Belize Forestry Dept.
“We need to enforce more monitoring here. I believe we need to sit back and sit around the table and visit all the concession licenses, see where the loopholes are, and revisit them and patch them up and from there enforce the work on the ground and at least have some sort of monthly, weekly, or even daily monitoring here because we came here, we saw some young children which are of concern to us and not sure if it too little girls but definitely we need to have some sort of monitoring.

You must remember always that even if we don’t counteract the market for xate which this task is trying to do, the market for xate illegally still will be happening. So this somewhat puts some pressure on the illegal market. It is not properly done or it is not properly managed but hopefully this wins over the illegal part.”

The Xatero had no papers and no copy of the permit because he said his boss, the Belizean who holds the concession was using them to get him a work permit. Tune in tomorrow when we’ll take you inside the Chiquibul Reserve on a patrol with the co-managers from the Friends of Conservation and Development.