🇧🇿 Belize · North and center
The Community Baboon Sanctuary is one of the most original and beloved conservation projects in Belize, and a visit that combines nature, wildlife and a beautiful community story. Its name can be confusing: there are no baboons —which only exist in Africa and Asia— but black howler monkeys, which in Belizean Creole speech are affectionately called 'baboons'. The sanctuary protects the habitat of these primates along the Belize River, around the village of Bermudian Landing.
What makes this place unique is not only the wildlife, but the model: the sanctuary was born in 1985 from a voluntary agreement among the farmers and residents of several villages, who committed to managing their lands in a way compatible with the survival of the monkeys, leaving forest corridors and fruit trees. It's a pioneering, internationally recognized example of community-based conservation. By visiting it, you directly support those families and see how people and wildlife coexist.
This guide covers the Community Baboon Sanctuary with a practical, warm eye: how to get there from Belize City, what to expect from the guided walks with howler-monkey sightings, what the visitor center offers, which other attractions to combine it with and why this community project deserves a stop on any route through the north-central part of the country. It's an accessible, educational and very rewarding plan.
The Community Baboon Sanctuary was created in 1985 as a pioneering community conservation project, driven with the support of scientists (among them the primatologist Robert Horwich) and conservation organizations, together with the local communities. Its aim was to protect the Central American black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra), a threatened species known locally as 'baboon'. The project's originality lies in its foundation: instead of expropriating land to create a park, dozens of private owners and farmers from several villages along the Belize River were persuaded to sign a voluntary agreement to manage their plots in a way compatible with the monkeys, preserving strips of forest, food trees and corridors that allow the howler groups to move and thrive. The result was an increase in the monkey population and a success model cited internationally. The sanctuary is managed by the community (through a local organization of women and residents), has its visitor center and museum in Bermudian Landing, and combines conservation with ecotourism and education. Besides the howler monkeys, the area protects a rich riverside habitat with other wildlife and flora. The full story is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
In 1985, a handful of farmers of the Belize River did something that at the time was almost unheard of in world conservation: instead of selling their lands or waiting for the government to expropriate them to create a park, they decided to remain owners of their plots and, at the same time, to leave strips of forest standing so that a noisy, furry monkey could keep living there. Four decades later, that agreement among neighbors still stands, and Bermudian Landing became one of the best places in the world to see, a few meters away, the loudest primate in the Americas. The name of the Community Baboon Sanctuary usually puzzles visitors, because there are no baboons in the Americas: these large primates are native to Africa and Asia. The explanation lies in the local language. In Belizean Creole (Belize Kriol), the black howler monkey is colloquially called 'baboon'. It's a classic case of how the settlers and inhabitants applied to American wildlife names brought from the Old World or adapted to local speech.
The protected species is, in reality, the Central American black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra), a tree-dwelling primate with dark fur that inhabits the forests of southeastern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Its most famous trait is its vocalizations: thanks to a special bone in the throat (the enlarged hyoid bone), the males emit powerful roars or 'howls' that can be heard for several kilometers and that serve to mark territory and communicate between groups. It's one of the most characteristic sounds of the Central American jungle.
Thus, the sanctuary preserves in its name the trace of Belizean Creole, while science precisely identifies its protagonist. This mix —a picturesque popular name for a threatened American species— is part of the charm and cultural identity of the place, deeply rooted in the local communities that sustain it.
The Community Baboon Sanctuary was created in 1985 and quickly became an emblematic case of community-based conservation. The initiative arose from the collaboration between scientists —in particular the American primatologist Robert Horwich— conservation organizations and, above all, the residents themselves of several villages located along the Belize River, around Bermudian Landing.
The founding idea was as simple as it was innovative: instead of creating a park by expropriating land (a common model that tends to generate conflict with local populations), the aim was to get the private owners themselves —farmers and residents— to sign voluntary agreements to manage their plots in a way compatible with the survival of the monkeys. This included preserving strips of forest along the river, keeping trees that serve as food for the howlers and leaving corridors that would let the monkey groups move from one property to another.
This approach turned the inhabitants into protagonists and beneficiaries of conservation, not its adversaries. Dozens of landowners from several villages joined the pact, and the sanctuary became a mosaic of private lands managed with a common goal. The model showed that it was possible to protect a threatened species while respecting the community's property and way of life, and it became an international reference for similar projects.
The project's very name reflects that philosophy: it's not called a 'national park' or a 'state reserve', but a 'community sanctuary', an uncommon category at the time that emphasized who really sustained the conservation. Horwich, who had previously studied howlers in Mexico, deliberately chose this path after observing that closed-park models generated resentment among the neighbors whose lands fell within the protected boundaries, with no direct benefit to them. In Bermudian Landing the opposite was sought: that caring for the monkey be, literally, good business for whoever lived there.
The result of the sanctuary was a tangible success. By protecting the habitat —the riverside forests, the food trees and the corridors— and by involving the community, the black howler monkey population in the area stayed healthy and grew. The sanctuary came to hold an abundant howler population, which even allowed, in later projects, some groups to be moved to other areas of Belize to repopulate zones where the species had declined.
That success made the Community Baboon Sanctuary a case study cited in the field of conservation worldwide, as a demonstration that community models can work and that local participation is key to long-term sustainability. Unlike protected areas that depend exclusively on the state or on external funds, here conservation rests on the commitment of the families that live in the territory.
The management of the sanctuary has been linked to local community organizations —including a prominent role of the village women in its administration and in the development of ecotourism— which adds a social and empowerment dimension to the project. The visitor center and museum in Bermudian Landing serves as the heart of this management, combining environmental education, tourist reception and the distribution of benefits among the community.
The reproductive success of the howlers in the area was so marked that, over the years, the sanctuary became a kind of living 'gene bank' for the species in Belize. Complete family groups of monkeys raised in Bermudian Landing were captured with careful handling techniques and moved to other protected areas of the country —including zones where poaching or habitat loss had decimated the local populations— to reinforce or reintroduce the species. That kind of translocation program, uncommon in such small conservation projects, gives an idea of the magnitude of the achievement reached by a rural community with modest resources but a clear vision.
Today the Community Baboon Sanctuary is at once a conservation area, an ecotourism destination and an educational project. The guided visits to observe the howler monkeys, the walks through the riverside forest and the activities around the Belize River generate income that's distributed within the community and reinforces the incentive to keep conserving the habitat. The visitor, by paying admission and hiring local guides, participates directly in this virtuous circuit.
Beyond the monkeys, the sanctuary protects a complete riverside ecosystem, with a rich birdlife, reptiles like iguanas, and other wildlife and flora typical of the gallery forests of northern Belize. This makes it a broader nature destination than its name suggests, also attractive to those who enjoy birdwatching and river life.
The model of the Community Baboon Sanctuary belongs to a stage in which Belize —independent since 1981— bet heavily on conservation and ecotourism as pillars of its identity and its economy. Together with its national parks, marine reserves and other sanctuaries, this community project shows a particular way of protecting nature: hand in hand with the people who live in it, demonstrating that local development and wildlife conservation can go together.
For those who visit Bermudian Landing today, that history is perceived in concrete details: the guide who explains the monkeys' behavior is usually a child or grandchild of one of the farmers who signed the original 1985 agreement, and the same plots that forty years ago were pastures or crops today preserve forested strips that serve as a bridge between one howler family group and the next. It is, in the most literal sense, a landscape built between people and monkeys, and perhaps for that reason the experience of walking its trails feels different from that of a conventional national park: there's no clear boundary between 'protected nature' and 'people's lives', but an everyday coexistence that has been working for decades.