Executive Summary
The Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center occupies an unusual place among the world’s conservation institutions: it was not planned, endowed, or designed, but improvised by one woman who refused to abandon a group of film animals left in her care. From that accidental beginning in 1983, the facility grew into a national emblem of Belizean conservation, an internationally recognized education center, and the base of operations for one of the most consequential environmental legal battles in the country’s history. This paper traces the institution’s history from its founding through the death of its founder in 2021 and the leadership transition that followed, situating the zoo within the broader story of Belizean conservation and environmental policy.
The Accidental Founding, 1982–1983
The Belize Zoo originated in a film project rather than a conservation plan. In the early 1980s, the British documentary cinematographer Richard Foster came to Belize to produce a wildlife film, and he engaged the American biologist Sharon Matola as an assistant and animal caretaker for the roughly twenty native animals being used in the production. Matola accompanied the crew as an assistant and animal caretaker for a documentary titled Selva Verde, Spanish for “green forest” (Belize Zoo, n.d.; Wikipedia, 2026a).
Matola’s path to this assignment was anything but conventional. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1954, she had served in the United States Air Force, where she received jungle survival training, studied Russian at the University of Iowa, and ultimately earned a biology degree from the New College of Florida in 1981; along the way she worked in circus animal training, including a period taming big cats in Mexico (Wikipedia, 2026b). Her work in Mexico brought her to the attention of Foster, who hired her in 1982 to care for the animals being used in the documentary (Wikipedia, 2026b).
When filming concluded, the project’s funds were exhausted and Foster departed for another assignment in Borneo, leaving Matola with the animals and instructions from the parent film company to dispose of them. The animals presented a genuine dilemma. By then they had become habituated to humans and were unsuited to release into the wild, and euthanasia struck Matola as unacceptable (Wikipedia, 2026b). When the film crew left, she remained with roughly seventeen animals, among them an ocelot, a puma, a jaguar, and several exotic birds, and started a makeshift zoo using the animals’ enclosures as exhibits in order to generate funding for their care (Wikipedia, 2026a).
The first version of the enterprise was rudimentary. Matola posted a “Belize Zoo” sign by the road, hoping that passersby would pay to see the animals, and she enlisted a nearby restaurant to encourage patrons to stop in (BZNC, n.d.; Wikipedia, 2026b). The zoo was formally established in 1983, sustained in its earliest years largely by Matola’s own modest savings and odd jobs (Belize Hub, 2021).
From Roadside Menagerie to National Institution, 1983–1991
What transformed an improvised animal-holding operation into a lasting institution was a discovery Matola made almost immediately. As Belizeans began arriving to look at the animals, she found that many of her visitors had never encountered the wildlife of their own country and held a range of myths and superstitions about the creatures in her care. One elderly visitor, looking at the jaguars, wept and remarked that he had spent his whole life in Belize and was seeing his country’s animals for the first time (BZNC, n.d.). It became apparent that Belizeans were largely unfamiliar with their native fauna, and the zoo’s purpose accordingly shifted toward educating residents and visitors alike about the wildlife of Belize (Wikipedia, 2026a).
This reorientation gave the zoo a mission beyond animal welfare. Matola began raising money from environmental organizations abroad and operated, as she described it, with the blessing of the Government of Belize even though the government could offer no financial support (Wikipedia, 2026b). A consequential moment in the institution’s material footing came in 1988. On May 10, 1988, Walter Mischer, Paul Howell, Sir Barry Bowen, and the Coca-Cola Company gifted 1,725 acres for the use of the zoo and the enjoyment of the people of Belize, though that conveyance was not formalized at the time (Humes, 2022).
The decisive institutional step came in 1991. With international and local support, the zoo moved to a new facility that included a visitor center, gift shop, and offices, along with gravel paths leading to spacious enclosures set within natural vegetation, and a commissary for food preparation and veterinary care (BZNC, n.d.). This is the facility that exists today, located at Mile 29 on what was then the Western Highway and is now the George Price Highway, roughly midway between Belmopan and Belize City (Belize Zoo, n.d.). The design philosophy distinguished the zoo from many of its contemporaries: the natural environment of Belize was left intact within the grounds, with dense native vegetation separated only by gravel trails through the forest (Wikipedia, 2026a).
The Education Mission and the “Ambassador” Model
The institution’s full name, the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center, reflects the conviction that became its organizing principle. Matola summarized her reasoning in a question she returned to often: how can people be expected to appreciate and protect their natural resources and their own animals if they do not know those animals (BZNC, n.d.)? From this premise grew the zoo’s central commitment to children. Matola reasoned that reaching the country’s youngest residents was half the battle, and over the years the education program brought presentations into schools that could not travel to the zoo while thousands of schoolchildren visited annually (BZNC, n.d.).
A defining feature of the zoo’s approach was its policy on which animals it would house. In keeping with its origins, Matola ensured that only native animals that had been rescued, orphaned, injured, or abandoned were kept at the zoo (BZNC, n.d.). Many of these animals, unable to survive in the wild, were trained to interact calmly with visitors, becoming what the zoo called “ambassadors” for their species. The most celebrated of these was a jaguar named Junior Buddy, born at the zoo to a rescued problem jaguar and trained through positive reinforcement; his story was published as a children’s book by Scholastic in 2010 (Wikipedia, 2026a). The annual birthday celebration for April the Tapir likewise became a fixture for Belizean schoolchildren and a recurring public event (Channel 5 Belize, 2021).
Matola extended this educational reach well beyond the zoo’s gates. She began contributing to BFBS Radio in Belize in 1992 with a popular wildlife series called Walk on the Wildside, and she authored numerous children’s books, including stories built around a character named Hoodwink the Owl (Wikipedia, 2026b).
Conservation Programs and Species Recovery
As the institution matured, it took on responsibilities that reached beyond display and education into active conservation science. The zoo became the headquarters for the Tapir Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, a fitting role given that Belize’s national animal is the Baird’s tapir (Wikipedia, 2026a). It also developed a reintroduction program for the harpy eagle, one of the most powerful raptors in the Americas; the zoo released its fourteenth harpy eagle back into the wild in 2009 (Wikipedia, 2026a).
Perhaps the program most closely identified with the zoo’s mission of reducing conflict between people and wildlife was its “problem jaguar” rehabilitation effort. The program worked with jaguars that had repeatedly preyed upon livestock or domestic animals, animals that are almost always older, injured, or sick, and therefore unable to compete with healthy individuals for food and territory (Wikipedia, 2026a). By taking in these animals, the zoo addressed a practical grievance of rural farmers while using the jaguars’ stories to build public understanding. Over the years, Matola rehabilitated more than twenty jaguars in this way, and the program became a model for managing human-wildlife conflict involving iconic species such as jaguars, harpy eagles, crocodiles, and owls (BZNC, n.d.; Channel 5 Belize, 2021).
The zoo today houses a broad cross-section of Belizean fauna, including all five wildcat species found in the country, the Baird’s tapir, both species of crocodile native to Belize, and a wide range of birds, including scarlet macaws, keel-billed toucans, jabiru storks, and king vultures (Wikipedia, 2026a).
The Chalillo Dam Confrontation, 1999–2005
No episode tested the zoo’s institutional standing more severely than Matola’s campaign against the Chalillo Dam, and none did more to define her public reputation both at home and abroad. The conflict began in 1999, when plans took shape to dam the Macal River in the remote Raspaculo Valley in order to generate hydroelectric power (Kirkus Reviews, 2010). The valley was critical habitat for jaguars, tapirs, and the country’s last remaining population of scarlet macaws, a population estimated at roughly two hundred birds that nested almost exclusively along that river system (Project MUSE, 2022).
Matola became one of the lead plaintiffs in litigation brought by the Belize Association of Conservation NGOs, a coalition she had helped found, against the government and the Canadian electric utility Fortis (NRDC, n.d.). The campaign escalated from letters and newspaper appeals into a protracted legal battle. In 2003 the lawsuit reached the Privy Council of England, Belize’s highest court of appeals as a Commonwealth member, making it the first environmental case ever to do so; on January 29, 2004, the Council found in favor of the government by a three-to-two vote (Project MUSE, 2022).
The campaign came at a cost to Matola personally and to the zoo. Supporters of the dam accused her of “environmental imperialism” and portrayed her and her allies as foreign invaders meddling in Belizean development (Diedrick, n.d.). When officials sought to pressure her, they proposed building a new garbage dump adjacent to the zoo, a project she ultimately defeated, in part after Princess Anne visited the country and spoke against it (Kirkus Reviews, 2010; ScienceBlogs, 2008). For all her efforts, including her revelations of geological problems in the dam’s planning, Matola lost the battle, and the Chalillo Dam, commissioned in 2005, placed the macaw nesting grounds underwater (Kirkus Reviews, 2010).
The aftermath partly vindicated her warnings. Matola was proven right in her claims that energy costs would rise rather than fall and that the area around the dam would become polluted, endangering both wildlife and human communities (Diedrick, n.d.). Subsequent litigation in 2007 compelled the government to monitor water quality, establish an emergency warning system for downstream residents, and track mercury levels in fish (Violence of Development, 2015). The episode was chronicled in Bruce Barcott’s 2008 book The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird, which brought the story to an international readership (Wikipedia, 2026b).
Recognition, Partnerships, and Public Profile
The zoo’s growing prominence attracted notable supporters and honors. The singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett and the actor Harrison Ford both became supporters of the zoo, with Ford’s involvement tracing back to Matola’s work as a consultant on the 1986 film The Mosquito Coast (Wikipedia, 2026a). In 2009 the institution received the Belize Tourism Board’s National Tourism Award for Educational Award of the Year (Wikipedia, 2026a). Matola herself accumulated recognition over the decades, including being honored by the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in 2019 and being named the United States Embassy’s Woman of the Year for 2019 (Caribbean Lifestyle, 2021; Belize.com, 2024). Her stature earned her the affectionate epithets “the Zoo Lady” within Belize and “the Jane Goodall of jaguars” abroad (Wikipedia, 2026b).
By the period immediately preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, the zoo had reached a stable operating scale. It drew roughly 75,000 visitors a year, about half of them Belizeans, and employed a staff of 58 (Wikipedia, 2026b). The pandemic dealt a heavy blow: the staff dropped to 32 by March 2021 as visitor numbers collapsed, while the zoo housed about 190 animals representing 45 native species (Wikipedia, 2026b).
Succession and Continuity, 2021–Present
The institution faced its greatest test of continuity with the death of its founder. Sharon Matola died of a heart attack at St. Luke’s Hospital in Belmopan on March 21, 2021, at the age of 66 (Belize.com, 2024). Her passing drew tributes from the Prime Minister, the Government of Belize, and the international conservation community, and it raised the obvious question of whether a zoo so closely identified with one person could endure without her.
The transition was managed from within. In April 2021 the zoo named Celso Poot as director; he had been employed by the institution since 1995 and had served as manager of operations and finance since 2008, working closely with Matola (Breaking Belize News, 2021). Poot framed his task as continuing the work Matola had begun, supported by an established management team (Breaking Belize News, 2021).
The years following her death saw efforts to secure her legacy in the landscape itself. In June 2022 the Government of Belize announced the creation of a wildlife sanctuary named in Matola’s honor, joining the zoo’s then-925 acres with the 1,725 acres gifted in 1988 to form a protected area encompassing the zoo and education center (Humes, 2022). The Tropical Education Center, an 84-acre site on tropical lowland savanna adjacent to the zoo, situates the institution within the broader Maya Forest Corridor, an ecological linkage of regional importance (Belize Zoo, n.d.).
As of the most recent figures, the zoo cares for somewhere between roughly 150 and 175 animals representing in the range of 43 to 48 native species, employs about 50 Belizeans, and receives on the order of 68,000 to 69,000 visitors annually, a notable share of them students and teachers (Belize Zoo, n.d.; Wikipedia, 2026a). It remains, by the institution’s own longstanding description, “the best little zoo in the world.”
Significance and Conclusion
The history of the Belize Zoo offers a case study in how a conservation institution can arise from accident rather than design and still achieve durable national importance. Three threads run through its story. The first is the link between display and stewardship: the zoo’s founding insight was that conservation depends on familiarity, and that a population unacquainted with its own wildlife cannot be expected to defend it. The second is the institution’s willingness to move from education into advocacy, most dramatically in the Chalillo Dam confrontation, where the zoo’s director became a national political figure and bore real costs for her opposition to a government project. The third is the question of continuity. An institution built around a singular founder confronts an obvious vulnerability when that founder dies, and the Belize Zoo’s managed succession to a long-serving internal leader, together with the creation of a protected sanctuary bearing Matola’s name, represents a deliberate effort to outlast the personality that created it.
Whether the institution sustains the standing it earned under its founder will depend on the same factors that built it: financial support that has never been guaranteed by the state, a continued commitment to native species and to the rescue-and-rehabilitation model, and an education mission aimed at successive generations of Belizean children. On the evidence of its first four decades, the improvised roadside zoo of 1983 has become a fixed point in the conservation life of the nation.
References
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Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center. (n.d.). The Belize Zoo – The best little zoo in the world. https://www.belizezoo.org/
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Breaking Belize News. (2021, April 27). Belize Zoo turns to Celso Poot as director. https://www.breakingbelizenews.com/2021/04/27/belize-zoo-turns-to-celso-poot-as-director/
BZNC. (n.d.). In memory of Sharon Matola. https://bznccares.org/in-memory-of
Caribbean Lifestyle. (2021, March 31). Honoring a conservation giant: Sharon Matola, founder of the Belize Zoo. https://caribbeanlifestyle.com/honoring-conservation-giant-sharon-matola-belize-zoo-founder/
Channel 5 Belize. (2021). A tribute to Sharon Matola – the founder of the Belize Zoo. https://archive.channel5belize.com/archives/216571
Diedrick, J. (n.d.). Visiting the Belize Zoo, remembering Sharon Matola. https://jamesdiedrick.agnesscott.org/visiting-the-belize-zoo-remembering-sharon-matola/
Humes, A. (2022, June 3). Late director and founder of Belize Zoo, Sharon Matola, to have wildlife sanctuary named after her. Breaking Belize News. https://www.breakingbelizenews.com/2022/06/03/late-director-and-founder-of-belize-zoo-sharon-matola-to-have-wildlife-sanctuary-named-after-her/
Kirkus Reviews. (2010, May 20). The last flight of the scarlet macaw [Review of the book The last flight of the scarlet macaw, by B. Barcott]. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/bruce-barcott/the-last-flight-of-the-scarlet-macaw/
Natural Resources Defense Council. (n.d.). Belize Supreme Court orders public hearings on Canadian-backed dam. https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/belize-supreme-court-orders-public-hearings-canadian-backed-dam
Project MUSE. (2022). The scarlet macaw: A note. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/326/article/866236/summary
ScienceBlogs. (2008, June 26). The last flight of the scarlet macaw: One woman’s fight to save the world’s most beautiful bird. https://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2008/06/26/the-last-flight-of-the-scarlet
Violence of Development. (2015, February 1). The sorry history of the Chalillo Dam in Belize. https://theviolenceofdevelopment.com/the-sorry-history-of-the-chalillo-dam-in-belize/
Wikipedia. (2026a). Belize Zoo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belize_Zoo
Wikipedia. (2026b). Sharon Matola. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Matola
Note: All photos were taken by Nathan Albright at the Belize Zoo on June 23, 2026.
