Sharon Matola

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section needs to be wikified to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please help improve this article with relevant internal links. (May 2008)

Sharon Matola is founder of the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center, begun in 1983 to protect exotic animals that had been used in a documentary film. It is now home to over 125 native Belizean species, and instructs people about wildlife and how to care for wildlife^[1] Matola's life story - in particular her struggle to stop the Chalillo dam - is documented in the book The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird (2008), by Bruce Barcott.

[edit] Founding the Zoo

Matola, the North American founder and driving force behind the zoo, arrived in Belize after a colorful career that included a stint with a Romanian lion-tamer and a circus tour in Mexico. Today, she recounts an incident that helped convince her she was on the right track during the zoo's difficult founding years in the early 1980s.

A very old man showed up at the gate after closing. At the time, Matola was keeper, janitor, tour guide, and accountant rolled into one, so she let the man in and gave him a personal tour. At first the old man commented freely at each cage about well-entrenched Belizean myths—how ant-eaters kill dogs with their tongues, or that boa constrictors are poisonous during the day. Soon he grew silent. Finally, as they stood in front of a sun-lit jaguar, Matola noticed tears in the old man's eyes. "I am very sorry, Miss," she recalls him saying. "I have lived in Belize all my life and this is the first time I have seen the animals of my country. They are so beautiful."

That was 1983, when the zoo consisted of chicken wire cages sheltering animals left over from a natural history film. Matola was hired by the film maker to care for the animals, and when the film was completed, she was left to decide how to dispose of them. Many were tame and unaccustomed to life in the wild, so the idea of an unusual zoo cropped up. Matola hung signs around the country to raise awareness about the wealth of Belizean wildlife and its deteriorating habitat; and she went outside Belize to raise money from environmental groups.^[2]

[edit] References

^ Maynard, Caitlin and Thane: "Rainforests and Reefs: A Kid's Eye View of the Tropics." Zoological Society of Cincinnati, Inc., 1996.
^ Discovery Channel. Ed. Huw Hennessy: "Insight Guide Belize." Insight Print Services (Pte) Ltd., 2000.

Bruce Barcott (2008). The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6293-5