The saga of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, introduced in 1990 as
the Paseo Pantera project, continued to unfold toward the end of 1996.
With a project development grant of $340,000, teams of experts in each
of the Central American states and Mexico developed detailed parks and
corridor proposals for each country. Under the guidance of Mario Boza,
serving as regional coordinator for the UNDP initiative, and with
technical assistance from WCS, the national proposals were amalgamated
into a single document, accompanied by a sophisticated regional GIS
map. These documents were submitted to the Global Environmental
Facility (GEF) with an invited request of some $14 million to implement
the corridor. Meanwhile, in a stirring turn of events, the European
Union (EU) made it known that the Europeans would double the GEF's funds
for the corridor. These apparent pledges, accompanied by massive
national commitments in Nicaragua, Honduras and Panama, by World Bank,
have set the stage for an exciting, if nerve-wracking 1997.
Conceptual Mesoamerican Biological Corridor Map
Mesoamerican and Caribbean Program Homepage