As a result of the traditional “top-down” approach to protected area management, the livelihoods of communities within and surrounding protected areas have been impacted all over the world for the sake of conservation projects. In order to address this disparity of interests between local communities and natural resource managers, a movement in protected area management has recently emerged to include local participation in the management of these areas. This new paradigm, or co-management, decentralizes the decision-making power from solely government agencies to one of shared governance with local communities (Lane 2001). This paper provides an assessment of a comanagement project and its components for two sites in Belize, Central America: Crooked Tree and Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuaries. The project makes a critical examination of the elements that are either ameliorating or hindering the successful inclusion of the local communities into the decision-making processes and management of the natural resources. Since the mid-1980s, the Government of Belize has relinquished authority for eight protected areas to the Belize Audubon Society, a national NGO, through a signed Memorandum of Understanding. Until recently, however, few public participation efforts have been initiated to engage local communities in the management strategies for the park. In order to conduct an assessment of the project, field research
was conducted which consisted of interviews with local communities, government officials and NGO staff and an extensive literature review on protected area management and project documents. As a result, the research team gained insights into benefits and challenges of the co-management project experienced by Belize Audubon Society staff, as well as local communities as a result of living in or adjacent to the protected area. Both successes and barriers of the co-management project, as of August 2003, have been identified. The analysis of this co-management project can be applied to other comanagement regimes in Belize and around the world and provide insights to other natural resource managers implementing similar projects.