ACHIEVEMENTS
WF's overall strategy within the Greater Caribbean has been quite successful. In its efforts to create and sustain protected areas, WWF has helped set up the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, Bladen Branch Nature Reserve, the Cockscomb Wildlife Sanctuary in Belize, the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala, and the Kaietur National Park in Guyana. A Children's Eternal Rain Forest (Bosque Eterno de los Niņos) in Costa Rica was saved from destruction through donations from thousands of children and adults from 36 countries. Efforts are on to manage other areas. WWF has worked with IUCN in planning a system of parks and protected areas in Central America. It has helped establish a Coastal Zone Management Unit to plan for the integrated management of coastal/marine resources in Belize. WWF has sought to give its conservation efforts a human face and involved local communities in its projects wherever possible. In Mexico, sustainable development activities have been initiated at Calakmul, El Ocote, and the Sian Ka'an biosphere reserves as well as in the Chimalapas and the Oaxaca wildlands, with support from USAID and the Biodiversity Support Programme (BSP). In Haiti WWF has worked with local communities and other development agencies in establishing a sustainable fisheries and marine protected area project at Les Arcadins. On the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, WWF has worked with the Neotropica Foundation in the first major attempt at natural forest management in Central America. This aims to introduce conservation, but also tailor development activities and ecotourism to the region's economic and social needs. WWF's efforts to promote environmental education, training, and organizational development assistance to local government agencies and NGOs has met with some success. More than 500 professionals and para-professionals have been trained in areas ranging from planning and management of protected areas and tropical forestry management to sustainable agriculture and ecotourism. A wildlife management course at Costa Rica's National University has so far produced 40 graduates from 16 Latin American countries. Dozens of Caribbean professionals have been trained at the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies, a training centre which WWF was instrumental in establishing. The search for innovative funding mechanisms for NGOs led WWF to establish the Guatemala Conservation Trust with an initial endowment of US$800,000. WWF has also raised money for a Nature Conservation Fund in Mexico and drafted enabling legislation to set up the Protected Areas Conservation Trust in Belize. Tourists subsidise the programme with a small fee. In addition, three debt-for-nature swaps have been concluded to finance the management of the Corcovado, Amistad, and Guanacaste national parks, and the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve in Costa Rica.
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Copyright 1996, The World Wide Fund For Nature