A newspaper clipping showing Gallon Jug in the 1940s, a timber camp that is now a private reserve, eco-lodge and organic food producer that borders Programme for Belize’s (PfB) Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area.
The key to World Land Trust’s (WLT) conservation success has always been our partnerships, teaming up with overseas conservation organisations to buy land and protect threatened habitats and wildlife. So much so that the origin story of WLT is closely intertwined with the founding of our first partner.
The story begins with renowned conservationist and WLT’s former Honorary President Dr Gerard (Jerry) Bertrand. In 1980, Jerry started an astonishing two-decade stint as president of the Massachusetts Audubon Society (Mass Audubon). He recognised early on that the effective conservation of migratory bird species requires protection not only of their breeding grounds in North America but also their wintering grounds in Central and South America. To extend protection to their wintering grounds, Jerry co-founded the Belizean NGO Programme for Belize (PfB) with Joy Grant, a passionate environmentalist with extensive experience on economic development projects throughout the Caribbean.
To raise the required funds for a major land purchase, Jerry approached the distinguished British conservationist John Burton for help, and in the following year, 1989, they founded and launched a new UK charity, also named Programme for Belize. With a grant of US$10,000 from Mass Audubon, John and his wife Viv established a UK-based office and pioneered a novel fundraising idea: Buy an Acre. This was set up to give supporters a way to protect an acre of wildlife-rich and threatened land for just £25.
Within months of launching, the fundraising target was hit and later that same year, the Belizean NGO PfB purchased 44,515 hectares (110,000 acres) of land, which was facing immediate clearance for agriculture. Thanks to the dedication of these committed conservationists, the land was spared this fate and became the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area. To this day, the new site safeguards tropical forests, ancient Maya ruins, and vital wintering habitat for North America’s migratory birds.
Joy Grant, PfB’s first executive director, and John Burton, co-founder of WLT, with a US$10,000 cheque to establish the UK-based charity Programme for Belize which would later become WLT.
Spurred on by this success, John and Viv began working with a second partner in 1993, this time in Danjugan Island in the Philippines. With that, the UK charity was renamed the World Wide Land Conservation Trust until settling on World Land Trust (WLT) in 1996. WLT continues to support PfB to this day, together with over 50 other local conservation partners in more than 30 countries around the world.
Once the mainstay of the Belizean economy, timber was the biggest threat to Belize’s Rio Bravo before the creation of the protected area. WLT supporter Hilary Hunt, whose mother became an avid supporter of PfB’s Buy an Acre scheme from the very beginning, was born in Belize (then British Honduras) in 1947. Hilary spent her first two and a half years living in the remote timber camp at Gallon Jug in the Rio Bravo, decades before PfB existed. Although too young to remember, Hilary has been able to piece together – through family photos and conversations – what Gallon Jug used to look like, back when it was still a timber camp.
A photo of Hilary Hunt in early 1949 at 2 years old, pictured standing in front of her grandmother, who was visiting from Bristol, having sailed across the Atlantic to Jamaica and then on to British Honduras by plane. Also pictured are her father (furthest left) holding her baby brother, her mother (furthest right), and a family friend (second from right). With many thanks to Hilary Hunt for this photo.
Hilary’s parents arrived in Belize separately by ship in 1946. Hilary’s father, a recent forestry graduate from the University of Edinburgh, arrived first after securing a three-year contract as a forestry surveyor with the British-registered Belize Estate and Produce Company, which owned around a third of the land in Belize. Hilary’s mother, already pregnant when she left Britain, arrived in Belize six months later, firstly staying in the capital until just after Hilary was born. Six weeks later, Hilary and her mother left for Gallon Jug, initially travelling by road to the remote village of Crooked Tree, where many locals found employment at the timber camp. A boat trip then took them to Hill Bank (now PfB’s Hill Bank Field Station), before the final stretch by rail in the passenger coach of the timber train to Gallon Jug. At the time, this was Belize’s only railway in Belize, and the only access to the camp until 1949 when a small airfield was built.
The only railway in (then) British Honduras, photographed around 1946-1948, showing the passenger coach which carried Hilary and her family up and down on their travels. With many thanks to Hilary Hunt for this photo.
Located at the final stop of the timber railway, Gallon Jug was inhabited by a small community consisting of a superintendent, a mason, the foreman, engineers, foresters, and their families. Powered by a generator, the camp’s palm-roofed buildings included the workers’ accommodation, a school that doubled up as a church, a resthouse, police station, commissary (camp provision store), and dispensary (camp pharmacy). Beyond these were livestock pens, a vegetable garden, and a burial ground. While there, Hilary’s mother set up a library for families and children, lobbying the British Council to provide books, and even had a piano shipped to the camp. She also persuaded Belize’s orange producers to send oranges to Gallon Jug so the timber camp children had adequate vitamin C.
Children playing in front of Gallon Jug school in 1948. With many thanks to Hilary Hunt for this photo.
The Belize Estate and Produce Company’s (BEPC’s) purpose was to selectively log the forest surrounding Gallon Jug for commercially profitable hardwood trees. Once the trees were felled, the logs were carried in a log carriage pulled by a tractor and stockpiled for transport. They were then loaded onto the timber train and transported each day to the logging headquarters at Hill Bank. Here, the logs were offloaded into the lagoon, chained together, and towed by a tug for 97 km along New River to the sea at Chetumal Bay. From there, they were shipped a further 130 km along the coast to the sawmill in what is now Belize City. The great expense of transporting the logs this huge distance through the remote landscape was well worth it; such was the value of the timber.
The tractors which were used to tow the logs from the point at which they were felled to the timber train. Of the 16 tractors pictured, one could count on around four being serviceable at any one time! Several were likely dragged into position for this eye-catching photograph, taken in the winter of 1945-1946.
A view behind the tractors showing the log carriages.
A log caught in mid-air as it is offloaded at Hill Bank into the lagoon for subsequent transport to Belize City. With many thanks to Hilary Hunt for these photos.
But with the Belizean forestry industry in decline, the profitability of logging at Gallon Jug wasn’t to last, and before long, the timber camp was one of the country’s last major logging settlements. With operations dwindling, Hilary and her family returned to the UK in 1949, and the BEPC moved operations to Ghana in the 1950s, before finally leaving Gallon Jug in 1956. Then in 1983, Belizean company Bowen & Bowen purchased the holdings of the BEPC, including the Gallon Jug Estate. Hilary’s mother contacted the new owner, and in 1988 attended a talk given at the Royal Geographic Society in London by the new Belizean NGO PfB.
While in Belize, Hilary’s mother, Patricia Wilson, developed a deep appreciation for the country’s wildlife and nature. It is therefore unsurprising that she was a passionate supporter of PfB from the start. In 1989, she bought her first acre through WLT’s Buy an Acre scheme and in the following years, a PfB acre was a regular birthday present in the extended family. In 2007, for her 90th birthday, she gifted many acres for her 20+ great and great-great nieces and nephews.
One of the first, if not the first, Buy an Acre certificates received by Hilary’s mother who was a steadfast supporter of Programme for Belize from the start. With many thanks to Hilary Hunt for providing this.
In 1993, Hilary and her mother went on a holiday back to Belize and visited Gallon Jug. The school was still there and they spoke to the teachers, but much of the timber railway had gone and the train was hidden, rusting away underneath dense vegetation. While talking to the teachers on their veranda, Hilary’s mother was astonished to realise that the teachers’ house was built on the foundations of the home they had lived in.
The teacher’s house at Gallon Jug photographed in 1998. With many thanks to Hilary for providing this.
Five years later, Hilary returned to Gallon Jug again, this time with Barry Bowen in his private plane. While there, she met some of his children who – with Barry’s passing in 2010 – are the current owners of Gallon Jug. Today, the former timber camp earns its keep from grass-fed cattle, shade grown bird-friendly artisan coffee, handmade sauces, and Chan Chich Lodge, a world-class wildlife and birding lodge.
A photograph of Gallon Jug school in 1993. If you scroll back up, you can see the contrast with its thatched predecessor in 1948. With many thanks to Hilary for providing this.
Since 1989, PfB has gone from strength to strength and now the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area protects 102,790 hectares (254,000 acres) of broadleaf forests, pine savannah, and wetland ecosystems. With 444 species of birds recorded here, this region has received international recognition, with designation as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International in 2008. Thanks to continued support from WLT, the Rio Bravo Conservation Management Area is now the largest private protected area in Belize, covering 4.4% of the country’s land area. More than that, it connects to the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala and the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico and forms the Selva Maya Region: the largest continuous protected area in Central America.
An early morning view over New River Lagoon at Hill Bank Field Station, once the region’s logging headquarters. Credit: WLT / Christina Ballinger.
The protection of Belize’s precious remaining forests is more important than ever, especially as the climate crisis brings unprecedented high temperatures and increasingly severe wildfires to this region. To tackle this, PfB employs rangers to safeguard the reserve from fires caused by illegal hunters and neighbouring cattle ranchers.
To learn more about how WLT and PfB continue to save threatened habitats in Belize, please visit our PfB partner page and to support our work, please click here.
Written by Lee Dingain with editing from Tristian Herbert with wonderful input and feedback from Hilary Hunt
