May, 2005
Firsthand account of the Macal River Valley

An email to friends from a Belizean guide and researcher in May 2005:

 ...How have you all been?  i bet a bit annoyed at me for not having e-mailed you in so long.  well, this is due to the fact that i havn't been in town for a while.  as you all may know, i've been working on a wildlife monitoring project since november last year.  i had about a month and a half off because our project ran out of funding.  well, we went back to work a week ago, and i've just come back into town today.

i'm covered in tick bites, and itching all over.  i've been in the Raspaculo river valley, in the chiquibul forest once more, searching for macaws and suitable trees to place artificial nests, above the flood zone of the chalillo dam's water impoundment.  i've also been cutting monitoring transects in tapir country, a.k.a.  tick heaven.  our study is looking at Macaws mainly, but also Tapirs, Morelett's Crocodiles, and Julians Mountain Frog.

On this trip i was left heartbroken.  I aged 10 years in about 15 minutes.  i witnessed something that my 21 year old eyes should not have witnessed. as a part of the completion of the dam, the area from the river bank to the 400 meter level is to be clear cut and burned before the water begins to build up behind the dam structure. this area is equivalent to about 2000 acres of beautiful forest, forest i have worked in and hiked during the archeological project that took place in this area.  for those who know and my want a description of what i'm talking about, about two minutes away from Rubber camp, toward Bailerina camp, begins what i call a massacre.  a barren wasteland of nothing but ash and smoke.  a desert, in the middle of the rainforest.  a monument to evil!  what hurts me to the bone is to witness a Tapir who once roamed free, who one called that jungle home, still roams there, still walks the same trail he used to before this holocaust.  he still walks his trail down to the river, refusing to accept the harsh reality of what has happened to his home and still walks this wasteland of ash, smoke, dust, and death.  to have seen this, to have seen such destruction was not meant for my eyes.  this has aged me, irreversibly.  i felt like weeping, but held it in.  i felt like screaming, but those screams only echo inside me.  i am angered, i am dismayed, i am heartbroken, a part of me is destroyed.

hope to hear from all of you soon...

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