An extreme pollution event at New River, Belize created an ecological collapse and caused health issues amongst communities. This project aims at identifying the cause to prevent similar situations elsewhere in-country that are also faced with rapid development, using crocodiles as a biological indicator for the health of the ecosystem. We aim at expanding our educational outreach campaign, creating community involved programs to build pride and stewardship of nature to create positive change.
The increase of industry and development has created extreme pollution events in aquatic ecosystems, which is impacting the survival of local species, as well as negatively impacting the health of surrounding communities and their cultural ties to the environment. There is currently a lack of scientific data to illustrate how current development and pollution is effecting wildlife and the livelihoods of communities, thus creating a challenge in strengthening environmental policy or education.
This project will expand our current scientific research (methods and locations), gathering the much-needed data to illustrate how pollution is impacting ecosystems and communities, utilizing crocodiles as biological indicators of environmental health. Additionally, we can expand our educational and community-involved programs, building capacity amongst community members as environmental champions to further a change in environmental protection to conserve and restore ecosystems from pollution.
We aim for ensuring healthy ecosystems in which wildlife and communities thrive by identifying the impact of water pollution within the environment, which can lead to ensuring the protection of public health, and conserve and/or restore habitat that is culturally important to people. Through our various educational tools, we aim at strengthening the voices of communities to ensure proper stewardship of local wildlife and habitat, which can also enforce environmental policy.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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