Belize has emerged as a global leader in environmental conservation. Belizeans proudly boast that 44% of the nation's land cover enjoys some form of protected status. As a result, the country is a virtual outdoor classroom composed of relatively healthy streams and rivers, vast expanses of protected areas and biological corridor linkages that include entire watersheds.

Much of the natural wonder of Belize is attributed to its position between two great land masses, its subtropical to tropical climate and low population density of human inhabitants. However, the small country of Belize has entered an era of rapid change as investors and immigrants move in, bringing industries, building homes and requiring food, water and other natural resources. We face the challenge of helping people to become aware of the importance of our watershed ecosystems and protecting these remaining natural treasures against the onslaught of irresponsible and careless development practices.

The Sibun River Watershed has been chosen as the bioregion for watershed field courses for several key reasons. The watershed is roughly 80 km long from headwaters to river mouth, offering the opportunity to witness the array of successional ecological communities and diversity of geology, vegetation and wildlife characteristic of watersheds many times its size. On-going research efforts have helped amass a large data base on the Sibun River and its catchment basin.

The Sibun Watershed is also unique because of the formation in 1997 of the community-based Sibun Watershed Association (SWA), composed of concerned watershed residents from 11 rural villages who are advocating to protect the integrity of watershed ecosystems for present and future generations of all watershed inhabitants.