Press Release – Ambergris North Alliance (ANA) | October 27, 2026 – IS OUR ISLAND READY? As a new tourism season begins and visitor numbers fall, North Ambergris residents ask government to do its part.
San Pedro, Ambergris Caye: A new tourism season is about to begin, and on Ambergris Caye almost every income depends on it. The latest numbers only confirm what many of us in San Pedro have been feeling and worrying about. New BTB figures show overnight arrivals to Belize fell 8.4% from June to September 2026 compared to the same months in 2025, with August down nearly 13%.
The evidence on the island is anecdotal, but it’s consistent. Tour guides, restaurants, shops, real
estate professionals, and hotels big and small all say the same thing: business is slow, as slow
as it has been since the pandemic.
In December 2027, Belize’s first-ever direct flight from Europe, Discover Airlines from Frankfurt, will bring fresh eyes to an island we have promoted for years for its natural wonders. These visitors are coming for pristine reef and unspoiled nature, not roadside trash. The government is celebrating the new route, but the real questions are: Is our island ready? Are we delivering on what we promise?
Need to Safeguard our Tourism Season
Belize sells the world our reef, our cayes, and our incredible nature. But visitors heading north are met with roadside trash, illegal dumping, bulldozed mangroves, and lagoons being filled in. Visitors notice, and residents despair at the lack of concern for our island and our environment. Ambergris Caye isn’t just a tourism destination. It’s our home.
For over two years, ANA has held monthly volunteer clean-ups along the north corridor. Neighbors, police, coast guard, and school kids give their Saturday mornings to pick up trash again and again. Through community events and sponsorships, we’ve raised funds to hire workers to clean our roadsides. We’ve also run our first environmental summer camp for North Ambergris kids.
On September 28, ANA wrote to eight officials, including our Mayor and Area Representative, the Minister of Tourism, the Minister of Sustainable Development, and the Chief Environmental Officer of the Department of the Environment. We dropped off hard copies here in San Pedro and asked for a response by October 12. That date came and went. Eight officials. Not one reply. Not to us, and not to the community we speak for.
We asked for action on known dump sites, many of them in plain view of visitors driving north to Secret Beach; regular household trash collection on North Ambergris Caye, or, until that can be enacted, a viable interim plan with more public waste areas; and updated by-laws, such as clear rules for construction sites and proper waste disposal for businesses. Belize has great environmental laws. What we need is enforcement. That’s why we asked the officials to sit down with us at a single table, not in separate conversations, to address these issues not in isolation but as the interconnected crises they are.
“We’re not asking government to do our work,” said the Ambergris North Alliance. “We’re asking it to do its own. Volunteers can’t keep up with this alone.”
On October 23, ANA delivered another hard copy of the letter to the Mayor’s office and reached out to the new Minister of Public Utilities, Logistics and Solid Waste Management, Hon. Ramon Cervantes, to request a meeting. We invite residents, businesses, and tourism partners to stand with us.
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