The Deal That Saved 236,000 Acres of the Belize Maya Forest
In April 2021, a coalition of more than a dozen conservation organizations pulled off one of the largest privately funded land purchases in Belize's history, and Chan Chich's own Gallon Jug Estate was in the room for it.
The land in question sits just south of Chan Chich's reserve: 236,000 acres of rainforest that had spent the better part of a decade under threat of being cleared for industrial farming. Today it's protected permanently, managed by a newly formed organization called the Belize Maya Forest Trust. Here's the fuller story of how that happened, and why it matters well beyond the boundary lines on a map.
A Rainforest Running Out of Time
The land now known as the Belize Maya Forest sits within what conservationists call the Maya Forest Corridor, a stretch of northwestern Belize that had been losing rainforest at nearly four times the national rate since 2011. Industrial-scale agriculture, sugar cane expansion, and illegal logging were steadily closing in, and without intervention, this rainforest was on track to become an isolated island surrounded by cleared land rather than a living part of a much larger system.
That mattered because this particular stretch of rainforest was never meant to stand alone. It sits directly beside the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, and together the two form one connected corridor rather than two separate patches of green.
An Unusually Large Coalition
Buying and protecting 236,000 acres isn't something any single organization does alone, and this deal proved it. More than a dozen partners came together to make it happen, among them The Nature Conservancy, Rainforest Trust, the Wyss Foundation, the Bobolink Foundation, World Land Trust, Re:wild (then Global Wildlife Conservation), the Wildlife Conservation Society, Programme for Belize, Mass Audubon, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the University of Belize Environmental Research Institute, and Gallon Jug Estate, Chan Chich Lodge's own parent estate.
Michael Bowen, who leads Gallon Jug Estate, was among those who helped bring philanthropic support to the table. It's a small but meaningful thread connecting the lodge you're staying at to a deal of this size: Chan Chich wasn't just adjacent to this story, it was part of making it happen.
Financed Like a Long-Term Investment, Because It Is One
The purchase itself came to $76.5 million, and the way it was financed is arguably as interesting as the acreage. Rather than relying purely on donations, the deal used an emerging conservation finance tool: the sale of carbon credits generated by the protected rainforest, which covered roughly half the purchase price. The rest, plus a $15 million endowment set aside to fund the land's management well into the future, came through the coalition's fundraising.
“You cannot have long-lasting conservation without sustainable finance.”
That endowment is what separates a purchase from a promise. Land can be bought in a single transaction, but keeping rangers patrolling it, fires from spreading, and wildlife monitored is ongoing work, and it's the kind of work that only continues if it's funded to.
What 236,000 Acres Actually Protects
The Belize Maya Forest is part of the Selva Maya, a roughly 37-million-acre stretch of rainforest shared by Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico, and the second-largest tropical rainforest left in the Americas after the Amazon. Within its own 236,000 acres, the Belize Maya Forest holds:
Central America's largest remaining populations of jaguar, puma, and margay
More than 400 bird species, roughly a quarter of them migratory visitors
Around 200 tree species across rainforest, pine savanna, and wetland habitat
Baird's tapir, howler monkeys, and spider monkeys
Three watersheds that supply about a third of Belize's drinking water and a quarter of the water used to irrigate its farmland
It's also a meaningful carbon reserve. Independent estimates put the rainforest's stored carbon at roughly 13 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, in the same range as the emissions from burning 30 million barrels of oil.
Nearly Doubling Rio Bravo
One detail that's easy to miss in the acreage totals: the Belize Maya Forest is directly contiguous with the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area, and nearly doubles its size. Rather than creating a new, isolated protected area, the 2021 purchase extended an existing one, which is what actually matters to a jaguar or a tapir that doesn't recognize a property line. A wildlife corridor is only as useful as it is continuous, and this deal made a meaningful one significantly larger.
Why This Matters for What You'll See at Chan Chich
Chan Chich's own 30,000-acre private reserve sits within this same broader corridor of protected rainforest in northwestern Belize. It's part of why a breeding jaguar population still moves through this ground, and why the birding here holds up against almost anywhere else in the region: the animals you're hoping to see need room that doesn't stop at any one property's edge, and thanks to deals like this one, more of that room now has a permanent future.
Guest stays at Chan Chich help fund our own reserve's day-to-day conservation work, separate from the Belize Maya Forest Trust's efforts but built on the same underlying idea: land this valuable stays protected only if someone keeps investing in it.
Come See What's Being Protected
Reading about 236,000 acres is one thing. Standing inside the rainforest that made this deal worth doing is another. If this is the kind of place you want to experience firsthand, we'd love to host you.
