Saving the Maya Rainforest

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By Brendan Borrell, for The Nature Conservancy. 

Excerpt: ...It is July and The Nature Conservancy and its partners recently closed a $76.5 million deal to protect 236,000 acres of rainforest here known as the Belize Maya Forest. Together with the neighboring Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, which TNC helped establish in 1989, the forest will anchor an 11-million-acre network of protected land that spans an area roughly the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined—amounting to almost a third of the entire Selva Maya. With the most recent deal, Belizeans have boosted their total protected land area to nearly 40%. Tropical forests serve as valuable carbon reserves, potentially representing up to a quarter of the climate mitigation needed globally by 2030 under the Paris Agreement. At a local level, this forest contains three major watersheds supplying the country with about a third of its drinking water and a quarter of its water for irrigation.…

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