Community Baboon Sanctuary

The Community Baboon Sanctuary began in 1985 when American primatologist Robert Horwich and local landowner Fallet Young persuaded 11 neighbouring farmers in Bermudian Landing to leave strips of forest standing on their own land for the black howler monkeys, known locally as 'baboons'. More than 200 landowners across seven villages now honour this voluntary agreement, and the howler population has grown from around 800 monkeys to an estimated 5,000, healthy enough that entire family groups have been relocated from here to repopulate Cockscomb Basin elsewhere in Belize. The voluntary pledge has since been copied by conservation projects worldwide.

Since 1998 the sanctuary has been run by the Community Baboon Sanctuary Women's Conservation Group, the first women-led conservation body in Belize, with one representative from each village managing guiding, grants and education programmes. Sightings of howler troops are close to guaranteed on guided walks, and canoe trips follow the same stretch of the Belize River used by the Maya and later generations of local families. There's no hotel as such. Visitors camp, stay with a local family, or book one of the informal homestays arranged through the village's small museum and visitor centre, Belize's first dedicated to natural history when it opened in 1989.