Wednesday, December 28th, 9:30 am, 2005

Busting Bad Boy "Che-peh"

As most of you know, Belizeans are very much into celebrating Christmas, so when Christmas time comes around it is always a challenge to maintain our patrols of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve (PHMR).  This is also usually the time that I personally get really involved with the micro-management of the Port Honduras Marine Reserve.  For the past couple of years, because our staff are so into the Christmas holiday, we let them take a few weeks off to enjoy the holiday.  Last year Dennis Garbutt, the PHMR Manager, and I picked up a lot of the slack and did several random patrols throughout the holiday season. This year with help from the community we decided to do some things differently and the results were amazing.

Che-peh, as he is known to everyone, is one of the "Bad Ass" guys who fish illegally in the PHMR.  For a couple of years now he has been intimidating our rangers, hassling them and just being plain out of control.  In fact, when our rangers' lives were threatened with gunshots being fired over the patrol station at night, we had a good feeling that it was Che-peh.  Che-peh, you see, gets around the law. He has a valid fishing license but lives in Guatemala, which really makes his license illegal in Belize waters.  But that's a whole other story.  Che-peh has his connections.  He also has a fast boat and many times has run away from our rangers and taunted them on top of it.  We know that he fishes in places that are off limits but it is hard to catch him and prove it.  So he gets away with lots of things and there was always little we could do - until this week.

You see, the word got around that all of TIDE’s “Hot Rods” (rangers) were off for
the holidays, so many people, especially a group from Guatemala, felt like this was
their best chance to make a killing in the protected zones of PHMR, areas that are off limits to fishing.  Conservation is obviously working in PHMR. We now have an abundance of species compared to areas outside the reserve. And all the fishermen know that lobster and conch populations are in abundance in PHMR. What they may not realize it that this is due to the management systems we have in place.  But again, that's another story and this is an email so I will keep it short.  Let me stay focused and tell you how we busted Che Peh.

With help from community rangers, we held off on our own Christmas celebrations for a while.  Members of the community assisted us with unmarked boats, helping us to patrol
these areas in secret.  On the day after Christmas, when most people are still celebrating, one of TIDE’s rangers was dropped off on one of the many cayes with a radio in hand.  The plan was for him to stake out the area and radio in for the boat at the fist sign of trouble.  And that day, trouble was spelled, C-h-e-p-e-h.  Our man hiding on the caye called in for the boat and like a marksman looking for the bull's-eye, he got his target.  
Che-peh was caught red-handed inside the conservation zone harvesting lobster and conch.  With no time to run, he was arrested and taken into the authorities.  Stay tuned to find out how the court case turns out.   Like Michael Jackson or the guys from Enron, he too has power to get lawyers.  So stay tuned…and thanks for your support to TIDE. Your support has helped us as our fuel bill skyrocketed this year, but it was all for a good cause. 

Yours in conservation,

Wil Maheia
Executive Director
The Rising Tide
Phone-501) 722-2431
www.tidebelize.org