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One of those projects was a mangrove assessment. Mangroves play a very integral role in protecting our environment so they wanted to know how Belize's mangroves were doing. Today they released the assessment and it turns out the grade was not too bad. The researchers and the Audubon Society told us more.

Emil Cherrington, Research Scientist/University of Alabama
"Essentially what we found was that since 1996 when the world heritage site was created up until last year there has been very limited rates of the clearing. The country has been doing well in terms of mangrove conservation specifically in the protected areas, outside of the protected area's rates of clearing are slightly higher."

"UNESCO put the Belize Barrier reef reserve system on the list of World Heritage Endanger site. Apparently, the results of this study are showing that the government of Belize has essentially made acts in good faith and the hope is that with this and other things the site will be taken off the site of World Heritage Endangered."

Amanda Acosta, Executive Director of Belize Audubon Society
"Our hope is that it is two-fold. One is that we have seen minimal change in the mangrove status which is a fantastic thing meaning that we have become aware of our endangered list status. Of our world heritage status. That is a positive thing. The second thing is that this afternoon and tomorrow we will be doing some training. It is also building some in-house capacity within the country so that we can continue monitoring because as many of us know enforcement and management are very expensive ventures. If we can use technology then that can help us in kind of flagging these hot spots and following up on those kinds of initiatives."

The assessment was also given to the Fisheries Department and relevant government entities. The research was funded by the Jeff Small Grant foundation out of the UNDP along with the Oak Foundation.