The controversy over commercial exploitation of southern Belize's limited stock of Rosewood has been raging for months. And now, the Ya'xche Conservation Trust has called on the Prime Minister to issue a moratorium on all harvesting of rosewood, and to formally re-instate the necessary legislation that will prohibit the export of raw rosewood timber.
Ya'xche is asking him to keep the moratorium in place until the Forest Department and/or Ya'axché has completed a thorough assessment of rosewood stocks in Toledo.
The letter to the PM points to two years of steadily increasing harvest of rosewood from community lands in Toledo - fueled by demand for raw timber from China. Ya'xche says it has evidence that small trees less than eight inches in diameter are now being extracted - which suggests that rosewood stocks have already reached a critical level, and could become locally extinct.
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