Summary
This study, using surveys and interviews from 65 indigenous villagers in the Toledo District of Southern Belize, finds a Community-Based Management/ecotourism approach to conservation of jaguars to be a potentially beneficial practice for jaguars, Mayan people of the region, and the land itself. Jaguar populations have seen rapid declines in Belize, largely due to habitat destruction and degradation caused by agricultural expansion, logging, and/or cattle ranching. After collecting the survey data, upwards of 90% of those interviewed, are in support of creating new conservation practices within the existing successful framework of nature-based tourism, and see it as a means of helping local people economically and creating positive human-wildlife interactions. Strengths of this study include drawing off of indigenous knowledge and actual opinion, and a limitation is seen in lack of numerical data on how this does or may help increase jaguar numbers in Belize. Implications of this paper are a need for economic policies that support ecotourism alongside public and verbal support for indigenous management practices once in place.
Belize has emerged as an international leader in jaguar conservation through the creation of numerous protected areas that contain prime cat habitat and by strengthening conservation laws. For example, in 1984, Belize created the Cockscomb Basin Jaguar Preserve, the first special jaguar protection area in the Americas. In 1995, the government expanded Cockscomb by creating the adjacent Chiquibul National Park. In 2010, the government continued this commitment to jaguar conservation by creating the Labouring Creek Jaguar Corridor Wildlife Sanctuary in central Belize. As a result of these protected areas, Belize has been rightfully lauded as a leader in nature-based tourism and protected areas creation in Central America. However, outside national parks and communities that directly benefit from ecotourism, it is less clear how supportive rural residents are of cat conservation. It is also not clear if jaguars persist outside protected areas in locations such as southern Belize, where the environment has been significantly altered by human activities. Through interviews with Mayan hunters, this paper investigates the attitudes towards jaguars, human-jaguar conflicts, and potential community-based jaguar conservation in two Mayan villages in the Toledo District in southern Belize. Also, using indirect methods, the paper documents the presence/absence and other temporal/spatial aspects of jaguars in a heavily altered landscape in southern Belize.