Pondering "parks vs. people" in Belize.

• Position: !Ojo!

THE CONSERVATION GOALS of ecotourism generally get laudatory, press, but they are also beginning to generate a certain amount of skepticism. What does ecotourism mean in practical terms? Is it, as some critics think, a boon to nature but a dead end for local people? Or is it just the opposite? Are ecotourism operators more interested in business, or in the environment? Does the "eco" in ecotourism stand for economics or ecology?

Perhaps nowhere does ecotourism's promise seem greater than in Belize, where the government has combined its tourism and environmental protection portfolios into one ministry. Having set aside huge tracts of land to protect its jaguars and other endangered species, Belize already has an enviable record in the area of wildlife conservation.

Now, a new nonprofit association is designing a community-based ecotourism policy for Belize's recently established national park at Five Blues Lake, located near the village of Santa Marta, midway on the Hummingbird Highway between the inland capital of Belmopan and the coastal town of Dangriga.

As the association, known as the Friends of Five Blues National Park, has learned in recent months, several conflicting issues surfacing there are symptomatic of the ecotourism industry's perhaps inevitable contradiction between economic development and nature conservation.

Association director and local farmer Leon Wengrzyn, who recently helped secure a United Nations grant to improve basic park infrastructure, is now trying to attract the attention of outside ecotourism operators. But an occasional birding tour, he feels, is not enough to help his village. He wants more substantive investments, preferably from local residents but, realistically speaking, more probably from absentee individuals.

The group's paramount aim is to maintain community control...