Concession area spans Manatee Reserve, Sittee River Forest Reserve, Sibun Forest Reserve, and the Western Hardwoods area of the Mountain Pine Ridge FCD, conservation NGO, pleas for vigilance from authorities
Whenever the word xaté has been used in Belize, it has been synonymous with illegal reaping done in the forests of western Belize by Guatemalan laborers, who work for their bosses in the neighboring country to harvest the highly desirable ornamental palm for lucrative export to the US and Europe.
Last year, Friends for Conservation and Development (FCD) noted that the xaté stock in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve (Cayo) had been decimated due to illegal reaping, and the stock within the Chiquibul National Park, an area where harvesting is prohibited, was exposed to illegal harvesting.
In late 2009, the Government of Belize had halted all except one of the xaté concessions over concerns that illegal Guatemalan harvesters were duplicating authentic documentation to make their activities appear legitimate.
On February 25, 2010, the Government of Belize announced a recently launched initiative, a joint venture with a Miami-based company, Universal Greens and Flowers, which also has partnerships in Mexico and Guatemala. The Belize partnership is with Eco Green, a Belizean company co-owned by Robert Montero, son of Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Rene Montero, and Ramon Matus, both of San Ignacio Town.
Eco Green harvests xaté from Belize’s forests for packaging and export, exclusively for Universal Greens, which is responsible for international marketing, Montero told Amandala.
According to Montero, they began harvesting in January 2010, and their license to cut xaté from the wild covers an expansive area across the Cayo, Belize and Stann Creek districts: Manatee Reserve, Sittee River Forest Reserve, Sibun Forest Reserve, and the Western Hardwoods area of the Mountain Pine Ridge.
The xaté project is based in Red Creek, in the vicinity of the twin towns of San Ignacio and Santa Elena, Montero said.
Representatives of both the Government and the companies claimed, at a ceremony to which only the Government Press Office was invited, that the initiative would mean more jobs and foreign exchange for Belize, as the palm leaves would be exported for sale on the US and Europe markets.
Universal Greens president Carlos Rodríguez told local media that they plan to spend US$2 million and create 1,000 jobs under the project.
Montero told our newspaper that currently, they employ roughly 75 workers. He conceded to reports that some of his workers are Guatemalan laborers; however, he claims that most of the workers are Belizeans. He furthermore confirmed reports of xaté scarcity along the Belize-Guatemala border.
He told us that while the fishtail xaté is the one in main demand, they are looking at exporting a variety of xaté leaves, including the jade variety.
He said that they had spent over two years researching the venture before this year’s launch.
The first batch of xaté leaves, said Montero, was exported roughly two weeks ago, around the time of the ceremony, led by Agriculture Minister Rene Montero. They are packaged according to four size categories: giant, super, large and regular, he explained.
Exhorting the Government of Belize to take due care in ensuring that the xaté harvesting is done in a sustainable way, FCD executive director Rafael Manzanero commented to Amandala: “Our understanding is that Eco Green is looking to have xaté production under a plantation program—if so be the case, then certainly we would endorse such an initiative as it provides for a method for sustainably harvesting and exporting xate. That, however, is yet to be seen.”
All Eco Green’s xaté leaves come from the wild—not from plantations.
“In the case of Belize, harvesting of xaté from plantations may be farfetched. Certainly it becomes less expensive to collect from the forest than setting up a capital investment for some three years in order to maintain and subsequently harvest from such an initiative,” Manzanero noted. “Eco Green, therefore, seems to be catchy, but a look at the forest rules in place does not go that far to encourage harvesters to move into plantations.”
He pointed to the case of Gosen Products Company Limited, whose extraction license runs from 2008 to 2010.
“There are 43 clauses and conditions,” noted Manzanero. “The question is who is out there to ensure that the practice of harvesting is done sustainably? Once the Forest Department provides a license then the challenge begins. It begins for us at FCD and security forces who on a daily basis are trying to arrest the illegal extraction of the natural resources in the Chiquibul National Park.”
The Chiquibul Forest, dubbed Belize’s largest standing forest, has been the prime area for xaté extraction.
“For this reason, in the Chiquibul Forest Reserve we had already voiced our concerns that no permit for xaté should be granted, yet a license was granted and is still under operation,” said Manzanero.
He noted that the permit provides for collection of the xaté plant from the Chiquibul Forest Reserve—located “smack in the middle of the Chiquibul National Park.”
“So as it can be imagined, harvesters will go into the park under the pretext that they did not know where the boundary lies. Section 4(d) of the license, however, notes that, ‘…for the avoidance of doubt, it shall be the responsibility of the licensee [the company] to verify throughout the currency of this license, including any period of extension, the boundaries of the forest reserves comprising the license area. . . .’ Yet as we have found over time, the temptation is just too much.”
Manzanero is of the view that existing permits for the Chiquibul Forest compounds the existing problem.
His recommendations, published in a previous article in this newspaper, are as follows:
1. Terminate all existing xaté permits in the country until a time when a national xaté utilization and management strategy is developed and put into place.
2. Conduct stock surveys to understand the feasibility of collecting xaté from the wild.
3. Strengthen mechanisms of control and management of non-timber forest products.
4. Trademark Belize xaté as an eco-friendly and sustainable tropical product, and identify a market for export.
5. Promote a type of social forestry where communities are intricately connected to the protection, and benefit from the sharing of the resource for local economic improvement.
6. Strengthen inter-agency coordination and support.
7. Increase manpower to patrol, protect and conduct surveillance.
At the recent launch of Eco Green operations, Minister Rene Montero was quoted as saying, “[The xaté industry] …can grow as long as we practice sound management practices. I think that we can sustain it so it can become a major income earner for Belize.”