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	MAYAS, MACAWS AND MAHOGANY - 10 YEARS LIVING IN THE MAYA FOREST OF BELIZE Chris Minty, MBE. The Maya forest is the second largest contiguous humid tropical forest north of Amazonia. Battered by tropical hurricanes for millions of year, occupied by Maya Indians for thousand of years and logged for hundreds of years, this forest is a truly remarkable and resilient ecosystem. Despite this disturbance or maybe as a result of it, the Maya Forest today is ranked as one of the most important biodiversity "hotspots" in the world. Known throughout the region as La Selva Maya, the forest is home to over 400 critically endangered species and is considered a top priority for conservation protection by many international conservation organizations.


	Chris Minty had flown into Belize many times prior to taking up his post as the new manager of Las Cuevas in 1997. However, all of his previous visits to this small Central American country had been for short field expeditions of a few weeks' duration. As he left a cold wet London in the early hours of a dark November morning he knew this trip was going to be different. Having spent the best part of the nineties as a soil scientist working with Prof. Furley at the University of Edinburgh, Chris often found himself up to his neck in foul smelling mangrove mud, digging soil pits in sun-baked savanna or scraping coral sands into collecting bags, therefore going to the rain forest was a real adventure and a great challenge.


	On his previous trips he had not ventured much into the forest-covered heartland of the country; apart from a brief jungle survival course run by the British Army. Arriving at Las Cuevas on a hot, steaming day after a five hour bumpy Land-Rover journey was therefore his first real introduction into the depth of the Chiquibul Forest. Met by local Mayan Indians who showed him around, he became enchanted with the place and the people.


	Chris, at present, leads the landscaping and sustainable development projects at the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants of the Royal Botanic Garden (RBGE), Before that he spent 2 years as Project Manager for the John Hope Gateway Visitor Centre at the RBGE.