Timber, Tourists, and Temples: Conservation and Development in the Maya Forest of Belize Guatemala and Mexico

Stretching across southern Mexico, northern Guatemala, and Belize, the Maya Forest, or Selva Maya, constitutes one of the last large blocks of tropical forest remaining in North and Central America. Home to Mayan-speaking people for more than 5,000 years, the region is also uncommonly rich in cultural and archaeological resources.

Timber, Tourists, and Temples brings together the leading biologists, social scientists, and conservationists working in the region to present in a single volume information on the intricate social and political issues, and the complex scientifc and management problems to be resolved there. Following an introductory chapter that presents GIS and remote sensing data, the book: considers perspectives on managing forest resources and the forestry and conservation policies of each nation examines efforts by communities to manage their forest resources explains the connections between resource conservation and use by local people highlights research projects that integrate baseline biological research with impact assessments explains the need to involve local people in conservation effort

Timber, Tourists, and Temples explores methods of supporting the biological foundation of the Maya Forest and keeping alive that unique and diverse ecosystem. While many areas face similar development pressures, few have been studied as much or for as long as the Maya Forest. The wealth of information included in this pathbreaking work will be valuable not only for researchers involved with the Maya Forest but for anyone concerned with the protection, use, and management of tropical forest ecosystems throughout the world.

Richard B. Primack is professor of biology at Boston University. He is currently investigating the impact of climate change on the flowering and leafing out times of plants; the spring arrival of birds and the flight times of insects in Massachusetts, Japan, and South Korea; and the potential for ecological mismatches among species caused by climate change. The main geographical focus is Concord, Massachusetts, due to the availability of extensive phenological records kept by Henry David Thoreau and later naturalists. He is using Concord as a living laboratory to determine the effects of climate change species, and land use changes on the population dynamics of native and non-native species. He is also comparing results from Concord with long-term changes at Acadia National Park in Maine. An expanding interest is the variation among species in leafing out times and leaf senescence times, and the physiological control of these processes. An ongoing activity involves producing conservation biology textbooks and working with co-authors to produce textbooks in other languages. In addition, Primack serves as Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Biological Conservation.


David Barton Bray is currently Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at Florida International University and Director of the Institute for Sustainability Science in the Latin American and Caribbean Center at FIU. He carries out research on community forest management in Mexico and Central America and pursues interests in natural resource and ecosystem management in Latin America and globally. He was Chair and Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Department at FIU from 1997-2002. He received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1983 in Anthropology and also has a master’s degree in Anthropology from Brown and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Missouri. From 1983-1986 he was Assistant Director and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University. From 1986-1997 he was Foundation Representative with the Inter-American Foundation, a U.S. government foreign assistance agency, in Arlington, VA. With the IAF he worked in Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay 1986-1989 and in Mexico from 1989-1997. From 1992-1998 he was a member of the Tropical Ecosystems Directorate of the US Man and the Biosphere Program. In 1997 he left the IAF to take up the position at FIU.
Since 1997, he has received research funding from the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, and the US Agency for International Development. He has also consulted for the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He is the lead editor of the book The Community Forests of Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2005) and is widely published in academic journals such as Conservation Biology, World Development, Land Use Policy, and Forest Policy and Economics and in journalistic outlets such as the New York Times and the Miami Herald. He has been invited to give presentations on research by himself and colleagues for high level Chinese forestry officials in Beijing, the World Bank in Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, the Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources of Mexico, and at Yale University, among other venues. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Ecologic, a Cambridge, MA NGO and an advisor to several forest community organizations in Mexico and is currently developing research and action projects with forest community organizations in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca, Mexico.


Foundation.
Hugo A. Galletti works with the National Union of Communal Forestry Organizations in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico.


Ismael Ponciano is director of the Center for Conservation at San Carlos University in Guatemala City, Guatemala.