Belize Trip Brings Dose of Reality
From the July 16, 1999, issue of the Salisbury Post
Center for the Environment
I
t’s just a memory now – trapping the Jamaican fruit-eating bat; entering a cave through
an 18-inch-diameter hole to discover ancient
Mayan pots; catching marine iguanas, 5-foot, 50pound spiny lizards that the Mayans herded to the
tips of branches where the lizards dropped with a
splash into Blue Creek.
Eleven Catawba College students and three
faculty experienced the exotic creatures of the rain
forest during a recent biological field trip to Belize.
“The enrichment value of a trip like this is tremendous,” says Dr. John Wear Jr., associate professor of biology. “You can hear the sounds and smell
the smells and just really connect to what we’re trying to teach, from the sense of understanding both
the natural history of the area and the complexities
involved in protecting these areas.”
This is the third year that biology and environmental science students at Catawba have had an
opportunity to experience a tropical habitat and the
second time they have gone to Belize. “We did a lot
more interacting with the local people this time and
saw the people interact with their ecosystem,” says
Dr. Steve Coggin, chair of the biology department.
measured wing spans of 15 inches.
Students sat quietly in the rain forest and observed the adaptations both plants and animals have
made to help preserve the species. They witnessed
the blue morpho butterfly, whose electric blue
wings dazzle onlookers when it flies. “But when
it lands and folds up its wings, the bottom surface
is brown,” Coggin says. “It’s a very good camouflage.” They also noted that leaves in the rainforest
have adapted to the downpours by developing long,
narrow tips called “drip tips” which allow the plants
to do photosynthesis,” Coggin explains.
The students accompanied the Mayans on an
iguana hunt. “It was fun to be able to go out and
catch these lizards,” Coggin says, “but for the people who live there, that’s a source of food.”
The students witnessed the Mayans trapping
birds and small animals. The Mayans load a snare
on a bent sapling to trap moles, which grow as
large as rabbits in Belize and serve as another food
source.
The students spent an evening in the palmthatched home of one Mayan family. “They saw
that the Mayans had the same problems in dealing
with life that we do,” says Coggin. “Yet they are
doing it at a material level that we would consider
unacceptable in this country, and they seem to be
pretty happy people.”
The students also helped catch bats. After
hanging mist nets between trees six-to-seven feet
off the ground, they returned in the dark to extract
the hairy big-eyed bat, the chestnut short-tailed
bat, and the striped yellow-eared bat from the nets.
They carried the bats in plastic bags to the field station where they identified the fuzzy creatures and
The fragility of the rain forests became real
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Center for the Environment
for the students when they saw a flatbed truck loaded with mahogany logs rolling by a local market.
“Our students stood there open-mouthed at that,”
Coggin says. “They saw the jungle being hauled
away on a truck, and they were appalled. There was
the future of Belize going down that road.”
The whole experience, which included identifying plant species on three different islands, collecting base line data on water quality, and observing
fluid dynamics in fishes, brought a deeper understanding of the ecosystem than any book could have
conveyed. “We want the students to see that these
ecosystems are real,” Coggin says.
“They’re not just something you see on the
Discovery Channel.”
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