Last night, we told you how the BDF and the conservation NGO, SATIIM, successfully recovered illegally harvested timber in the Black Creek area in the Sarstoon Temash National Park.
The illegal lumber was first discovered on July 11th, when SATIIM organized a Maya community patrol to confirm reports that poachers, most likely Guatemalans, had cut large quantities of the very valuable Santa Maria hardwood trees. 2 weeks ago, it made headlines when the Guatemalan military at the mouth of the Sarstoon River tried to stop the Belize Territorial Volunteers and SATIIM from going to Black Creek. They were on the way to retrieve that illegally harvested wood, but the Guatemalan military tried to prevent their passage through the river. They ended up backing off slightly when a BDF vessel showed up.
That trip failed because the BDF escort vessel broke down, and Wil Maheia's vessel, Binky, was used to tow it back to the BDF's forward operating base.
On Saturday, however, the BDF and SATIIM made another trip to the Black Creek area, and they ended finding the illegally harvested wood right where they first encountered it 3 weeks ago.
Via telephone today, SATIIM's executive director told us that she suspects the harsh weather in the national park is most-likely what prevented poachers from moving the timber before they arrived to confiscate it. The director also said the one downside to the entire expedition was that they had to destroy half of the very valuable wood on site. Here's our conversation with her from this evening:
Voice of: Froyla Tzalam, Executive Director, SATIIM
"We discovered that were heighten activity near the black creek area, which is a historical hotspot area. So we mobilize our forces in July to actually get a better indication of what is there and because of the size of the illegal lumber that we found, we were unable to bring it back to the office and 2 patrols thereafter one of which was on the 23rd when we attempted to go along with the Belize Territorial Volunteers boat, we were refused to go any further and were forced back by the Guatemalan Armed Forces. It was only the BDF when they were escorting that were able to go back to where we wanted to, unfortunately we were not able to complete our mission. So actually the patrol on Saturday was the 3rd in a series of patrols to the same site to deal with the same issue and this time when we went we went with the full force with the BDF and we had 2 boats; one to bring back the amount of boards that were there and the one to really carry back and forth with the shallow waters of the black creek."
"Everything went without any glitch whatsoever. We left around 7:30 and we were back in PG about 1. Unfortunately, because the weather condition had worsened the initial visit, we were not able to bring all the illegal lumber and so to make sure that nobody would be able to benefit from illegal activity we had to destroy the lumber by cutting it into unusable pieces. So we were only able to bring back about 45% of the amount that was harvested. I can't say why it wasn't removed, why 3 weeks later it was still there. We've been in situations where we've seen it happened and by the time we go back in less than a week, it was already moved and we know that a lot of activity took place over the weekend, so that is why when we got intelligence that it was still there, we were able to mobilize basically less than 24 hours which is very rapid time to get the BDF to be able to move that fast, but that's how important the area was for them."
The Director tells us that the quantity of wood that they did manage to retrieve will be used to construct a resource center. That center will promote the Sarstoon Temash National Park as a protected area, and so the recovered timber becomes part of the exhibit.
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