Mangroves,, what Mangroves??? I don't see no Mangroves,,,

This morning I added a new blog to the growing list of interesting blogs. Our buddy Tim Smith has been busy. Tim is a biologist who is passionate about the lagoon. He teams up with Friends of Nature, World Wildlife Fund folks and I believe some others and they do what they can to monitor and help preserve the Placencia lagoon for its own good. They study the water conditions, the plant life, the condition and abundance of fish species just to mention a few. It was these folks who allowed me to go along when they tagged some manatees a few months ago. They check the plants on the bottom that the manatees eat and try to determine if they will keep visiting. They even gather manatee poop and see if those plants are in it.
Yesterday we got an email saying how a group of concerned citizens went out and planted 3,000 mangrove seeds. Everyone felt real good about giving something back to the ‘earth’. I thought it seemed like a very worthwhile gesture as well. But, as I was reading the e-mail, I heard that all too familiar rumbling racket as I looked out the window and saw a truck with a trailer hauling a huge dredger, mangrove remover heading south. Those baby mangroves have as much of a chance of surviving this development explosion as a cold Belikin would if it was placed in front of me! Fuckin slim!
A lot of people are very concerned about the preservation of the peninsula. Trouble is, a lot of people are very concerned about stuffing their bank accounts too! Every inch of Belize is looked at as a possible money machine. And a lagoon don’t generate no money. You need to use it, exploit it.
Not too long ago you didn’t see any dredgers out in the lagoon. Today, I bet there are between 10 and 15 of them going to town out there. Not only are they filling in areas for buildings, they are using it as a quarry to mine sand and haul it elsewhere.
A rep from the DOE told us that ‘the fish love it’! OK,, how can you argue that?
The GOB is changing the face of Belize, the reputation it has as an eco-destination, everything that has attracted visitors for years, trade all that for the complete opposite type of visitor. The ones who want all inclusive, casinos’s, malls, and golf.
Don’t get me started,,,,,












I’ve put a dozen vampires into A.A.