"Up until a few years ago, development along the coast and on the cayes of the Barrier Reef had been small-scale and fairly appropriate. Many of the conservation initiatives in place are run by local people who make a living in the marine reserve. The biggest threat has been a recent trend away from this smaller, appropriate scale toward mass tourism dominated by cruise ships. Where cruise-ship passengers most commonly visit, the reef has been highly impacted and barely resembles the reef in the southern part of the country, where the number of visitors is much smaller."
"The condition of the reef is not being considered as the development of coastal areas and islands of Belize are accelerating.It seems that the balance between the accommodation of visitors and sustaining the reef assets has tipped severely toward the accommodation of visitors.The development of condo communities using nontraditional architecture detracts from the community-scape."
"When I performed research on this area, there was a sense of impending danger if tourism did not generate more support for conservation in the long term."
"When I first visited over 12 years ago, the condition of animals and plants was substantially better than it is today, and there was less visitation and more commitment on the part of visitors, who often were there due to serious interests in natural resources. Today, few people seem to even know what they are looking at."
"Global warming is a tremendous threat to the health of the reef system including more severe hurricanes due to the sea temperature increase."
