‘Teeming with biodiversity’: green groups buy Belize forest to protect it ‘in perpetuity’

Conservation organisations purchase 950 sq km biodiversity hotspot, helping to secure a vital wildlife corridor

These logs are historic," says Elma Kay, standing in Belize Maya Forest, where she has been doing an inventory of felled trees. These are the last logs that were cut here, for mahogany and other hardwoods, left behind by the previous logging company."

Trees will no longer be cut down in this 950 sq km (236,000-acre) area, after the land was bought by a coalition of conservation organisations to save one of the world's last pristine rainforests from deforestation. The forest will now be protected in perpetuity," says Kay.