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For the SACD, it's their first time receiving the grant, which will be used to better manage the Bacalar Chico National Park. For the MBWS, this is their third grant, which will be used to build on the first two that they received. We spoke to representatives from both organizations today.

Samuel Barrett, Development Manager, SACD
"We are the newest grantee of the Belize Nature Conservation Foundation so they're going to be supporting us with a 9 month project that we're going to be implementing in Bacalar Chico National Park which is one of the protected areas we manage along with Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary."

"We signed a co-management agreement with the government in 2023 for Bacalar Chico National Park and since then we've been working on developing a management plan and engaging stakeholders to see how they want us to manage the protected area because as a organization we manage the protected area on behalf of the people who benefit from it. And we're now at a point where we need to launch a permanent presence, 365 days a year within the park so this project is going to be supporting our rangers with the training that they need and also providing them with all of the resources and provisions that they need on the side full time as well as upgrading some of the slightly tired infrastructure in the park to make sure that they have somewhere safe and secure to have as their base as well as demarcating some key areas within the site with some tourism signage, some boundary signage and clearly demarcating where the rocks point Unesco World Heritage Site is within the national park."

Hannah Knab, Secretary, Board of Dir., Money Bay Wildlife Sanctuary
"The grant that we just got was for our protected areas management. We're going to use that money to get an ATV for our rangers to make it easier for them to mobilize in case there's illegal, hunting, poaching, logging or anything like that within the sanctuary or if there's any natural disasters like wildfires or hurricane reforestation projects or anything like that that needs to happen, we'll have that available for them and we're also going to hire an education and outreach person for us so that we can educate our local communities about how to be more proper in terms of like managing fires or poaching and things like that."

Eli Miller, Managing Director, Monkey Bay Wildlife Sanctuary
"We were lucky enough to get one ATV through the PACT project CIS Investment 2, that was last year. But we have a ranger team that is bigger than the amount of people that can fit on the current ATV so in order to effectively mobilize the entire team, we found the need to have a second one available, not only for mobilizing the team but also for responding to natural disasters such as wildfires or incursions into the park, illegal activities and so forth."