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The operations manager at the Belize Zoo, which forms part of the Maya Forest Corridor Trust, explained more via Zoom. Courtney Menzies has this story.

This is how the Coastal Highway looked this morning when 24 to 30 inches of rain covered at it at the Manatee Bridge and Corn House Creek Bridge approaches, and two of the floodways.

It's the second time the road has been inundated in a few days and, apart from it passing through a wetland, the main reason for the intensity of the floodwaters is because of deforestation.

Celso Poot, Operations Manager, TBZ
"One of the things we observed is all the land clearing, all the development that has happened since the upgrade of this road. Recently we just had this extended dry season where we had bush fire and forest fires across the country but this area in particular is savannah and every year the savannah in these areas burn so the Belize Zoo, the Foundation for Wildlife Conservation, Monkey Bay were all fighting fires during the dry season. What that translated into was that the soil, the forest floor is left basically naked, there is no bush to slow down, to absorb all the water that is running off and that's one of the reasons we're seeing these flash floods in these areas."

But the forest fires aren't the only cause of the deforestation - it's also due to the development happening in the area, which Poot says should have been more properly planned a long time ago.

Celso Poot, Operations Manager, TBZ
"Belize is in need of a national land use policy. We need that. I remember clearly when they were upgrading the Southern Highway, they put that in place where lands were not being given out along the highway because you need to mitigate for these sort of things, now that was not done for the Coastal Road. Development started along the Coastal Road as soon as it was announced that that road would be upgraded and paved and this is one of the consequences of that. [00:04:13.00] we need to plan, the government, the policy makers, the technocrats in Belize, they need to make recommendations for these things to happen in Belize because we're going to get more of these extreme events with climate change. It's no doubt about that. We were just monitoring and we got 4-6 inches of rain in less than 2 or 3 days so we expect more of that."

"You're looking at erosion down the road as well because you're leaving soil exposed, all that dirt exposed, and when this water come, it's just going o wash it away as well so it's several factors that are contributing to the flooding that we're seeing along the Coastal Road."

And Poot says there's also illegal deforestation to be concerned about within the reserve:

Celso Poot, Operations Manager, TBZ
"One of the things we also need to take into consideration and this is something that we at the Maya Forest Corridor Coalition recently learned is that there is extensive deforestation happening in the Manatee Forest Reserve. This could also be a contributing factor, I mean the Forest Reserve also protects the watershed it also protects the catchment area, if you're having deforestation whether it's illegal logging, whether it's land clearing that's happening, that will speed up the process of the water getting down to the Coastal Road."

"When you look at satellite imagery for forest change within the Manatee Forest Reserve, we are seeing an increase in the rate of deforestation which will be illegal deforestation happening and we're seeing areas being cleared totally and we're seeing areas being logged. That is also contributing to the large volume of water we're seeing."

And while they've just discovered that illegal activity, they say someone needs to get to the bottom of it soon before it's too late to save the reserve.

Celso Poot, Operations Manage, TBZ
"If the Maya Forest Corridor is there and the Maya Forest Corridor is denuded, it's not there anymore, than our whole purpose, our whole objective of trying to create this corridor for wildlife and other animals in general to move across the landscape would be futile."