Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve Set for Tourism Upgrades

Just twenty miles off Belize’s coast lies one of the country’s most important marine ecosystems: the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve. Earlier this week, the Belize Tourism Board and the Protected Areas Conservation Trust launched the Tourism Enhancement in Protected Areas Program, a fund designed to support upgrades to visitor infrastructure and conservation efforts within three of Belize’s protected areas, including Turneffe.  Today, it became the focus of efforts aimed at strengthening both conservation and sustainable tourism. Stakeholders visited several locations within the reserve to see where those improvements are expected to take place. The marine reserve is co-managed by the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association, and its Executive Director, Valdemar Andrade, says the project marks an important step forward for this piece of our jewel.

 

Valdemar Andrade, Executive Director, TASA

“These are funds that are very hard to come by in our business, but these are very necessary funds as well. One of the ideas behind these kinds of programs is for us to generate our own revenues at the end of the day. In this, we are doing amenities on Mauger Caye, on Calabash, and here in Caye Bokel. At Mauger Caye we are putting in a pier so that visitors can alight and come out easily and come onto the property and engage in the facility, have lunch there, and do a barbeque. At Calabash, we are putting in a center where visitors can congregate and take part in being and learning more about what we do here at the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve and also to contribute as one of the Turneffe ambassadors through our paraphernalia that we message in the in blue talks that we give them as through these facilities. Here at Caye Bokel, they’re giving us a portion for our conservation outpost, for the guys who manage all of this at the end of the day. But we are also going to be able to show visitors what we do and how we do it, because that’s a part of the messaging that we need to do.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

Watch the full newscast here: