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[[image]]

Mexico

Belize
Belmopan

Guatemala
Guatemala City

El Salvador
San Salvador

Honduras
Tegucigalpa

Nicaragua
Managua

Costa Rica
San Jose

Panama
Panama City

Colombia

[[other labels]]

Caribbean Sea

Gulf of Honduras

Pacific Ocean

Panama Canal

Gulf of Panama

[[contents of boxes]]

[[box one]]

The Peten region of northern Guatemala and Belize is the largest tropical rain forest in the hemisphere outside the Amazon Basin but is under siege by loggers and peasants.

[[box two]]

Honduras has the Platano River biosphere and the Patuca and Tawaka reserves, but if deforestation continues at its current rate the country will become a virtual desert by 2020.

[[box three]]

The Bosawa and San Juan River reserves of Nicaragua are protected largely because of their remote locations. Two-thirds of Nicaragua's original forests have disappeared. Most of it was burned to make room for cattle and agriculture.

[[box four]]

Tiny and industrialized El Salvador has been stripped of all but 2 percent of its original forests. 

[[box five]]

Panama suffers from many of the same problems as its Central American neighbors, but tax incentives have led many private land owners to reforest their land. 

[[box six]]

El Tortuguero

[[box seven]]

Monte Verde

[[box eight]]

Manuel Antonio

[[box nine]]

Costa Rica features spectacular national parks like Monte Verde, Manuel Antonio and El Tortuguero on the Atlantic Coast. But banana plantations on the Atlantic Coast destroyed much of the original forest. 

[[in bottom left corner]]

Source: Central American Commission on the Environment and Development

[[label of image]]

Major nature reserves in Central America by country, 1995

Transcription Notes:
[[image: Map of Central America]]