Maya Forest

The Maya Forest is the largest remaining forest in the Mesoamerica Biodiversity Hotspot, spanning Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala. A single thread of forest keeps it connected. Re:wild and partners are fighting to protect it.

Protecting the Maya Forest corridor

The Maya Mountains of southern Belize and the Selva Maya of Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize make up the Maya Forest, the largest remaining forest in the Mesoamerica Biodiversity Hotspot.

The two areas are connected by a single thread of forest known as the Maya Forest Corridor, roughly five to six miles wide. It is the only area connecting Belize's two Jaguar Conservation Units: the Maya Mountain Massif and the broader Selva Maya to the north. Lose the corridor, and you effectively split one large, functional forest into two smaller, more fragile ones.

The corridor also provides critical habitat for the Endangered Baird's Tapir, Belize's national animal; the Central American Spider Monkey; the Critically Endangered Central American River Turtle; and White-lipped Peccaries, which have disappeared from 87% of their former range. What happens here affects all of them.

Over the past decade, the Maya Forest Corridor has shrunk by more than 65%.

Most of that destruction came from sugarcane farming and large-scale agriculture. The corridor has been reduced from a broad belt of forest to a narrow strip, fragile and increasingly exposed. The research is clear about what is needed: at least 50,000 acres must be protected to keep the corridor functional. Of that total, 10,000 acres are already protected. The other 40,000 are privately owned and urgently at risk.

In 2021, Re:wild and partners purchased 30,000 acres — the single most critical property in the corridor.

The purchase was the largest single land acquisition possible within the Maya Forest Corridor, and it was the property most urgently under threat. It is now under management by WCS Belize and will form the core of a reserve that will be protected in perpetuity for the people of Belize.

The goal is for the land to generate jobs in forest restoration, protection, and management, while catalyzing a broader plan for sustainable tourism and agriculture across the wider landscape.

Re:wild and the Maya Forest Corridor Coalition continue to work toward protecting the additional 50,000 acres that researchers have identified as essential to keeping the corridor intact.

The wetlands of the Maya Forest Corridor help protect Belize from the floods and storms that climate change is making worse.

The Maya Forest Corridor Coalition, made up of local and international partners including Re:wild, was built around a shared recognition that this place is irreplaceable.

The corridor is not only a wildlife habitat. Its wetlands store water, buffer flooding, and make Belize more resilient to the increasingly severe weather events that climate change is producing.

Protecting the corridor is a conservation investment and a climate investment, and the two cannot be separated here.