Vaca Forest Reserve is a
nature reserve
A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, funga, or features of geologic ...
in the
Cayo District
Cayo is a district located in the west part of Belize, and it contains the capital, Belmopan. It is the most extensive, second-most populous and third-most densely populated of the six districts of Belize. The district's capital is the town of S ...
of western
Belize
Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. P ...
. The reserve covers an area of .
It is bordered to the west by
Guatemala
Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
, to the east by
Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve and
Nojkaaxmeen Elijio Panti National Park, and to the south by
Chiquibul National Park.
It forms part of the greater
Maya Mountains
The Maya Mountains are a mountain range located in Belize and eastern Guatemala, in Central America.
Etymology
The Maya Mountains were known as the ''Cockscomb'' or ''Coxcomb Mountains'' to Baymen and later Belizeans at least until the mid ...
massif
A massif () is a principal mountain mass, such as a compact portion of a mountain range, containing one or more summits (e.g. France's Massif Central). In mountaineering literature, ''massif'' is frequently used to denote the main mass of an ...
.
Vaca Forest Reserve was established in 1991 and originally consisted of an estimated . In 2003, over were removed from the reserve by the
Government of Belize to provide more land to farmers from the buffering communities.
In 2011, an additional were removed.
In recent years, the reserve has been seriously degraded by agricultural encroachment,
illegal logging
Illegal logging is the harvest, transportation, purchase, or sale of timber in violation of laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests; extraction without permission, or from a p ...
, and
forest fires A forest fire
A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a bushfire ( in Au ...
.
References
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Protected areas of Belize
Protected areas established in 1991
Nature conservation in Belize
Cayo District
Forest reserves