A Five-year Moratorium on Extractions from National Land

Belize’s forests are under siege, and the threat is growing. Illegal loggers and extractors are stripping national lands of timber, bush sticks, bay leaves and other resources at an alarming rate. To counter this threat, at the beginning of December, government implemented a moratorium banning extraction from public lands. This intervention effort only seems to have forced offenders to find new ways to operate, often during holidays when enforcement is stretched thin. Deputy Chief Forest Officer John Pinelo says that over Christmas and New Year’s, authorities intercepted truckloads of unpermitted material and issued over fifty thousand dollars in fines. The Forest Department says the concern isn’t just trees today, but the ecosystems we’ll depend on tomorrow. Pinelo explains why the crackdown is urgent and what’s being done to stop the destruction.

 

John Pinelo Jr., Deputy Chief Forest Officer

“I think we can all safely say and see that the extraction of materials from national land has been so much so much of it has been going on that we are depleting what we have in national lands. We are cutting down the trees that are on national lands and we are also cutting down bush sticks, which are the future trees. You can see advertisements on Facebook where people are selling five hundred bush sticks to build one house. That’s five hundred potential trees that are gone from the forest. So you’re looking at the removal of – illegal removal of timber and young trees, bay leaf and all the pimienta sticks and all of those things. Bay leaf and Pimienta sticks are renewable but the trees will take years for them to grow back. And so we the government and the ministry made the decision to put a five-year moratorium on extraction of materials from national lands. You can now only log your private land, or if you have a legitimate lease, you can get a permit to extract material from your private property. We instituted our hotline about three months ago six-ten-fifteen-twenty-four. And the hotline has helped us tremendously to identify and to catch people who have been conducting illegal activities. Over the Christmas holidays, we responded to at least six. In fact, I just walked back into my office because we were dealing with a fifty-foot truckload of Bay leaf  that had no permits and this is daily for our staff.”