Today the World Wildlife Fund in Belize, along with its partners, launched it's fifth mangrove friendly challenge. It's a way to raise awareness for the importance of mangroves and to encourage landowners and hoteliers to get creative with their mangroves, instead of just chopping it down. Today at the opening ceremony, WWF Belize's Nadia Bood told us more.

Nadia Bood, WWF Belize

"Because of the demand to live along the coast, we've seen the footprint, the development footprint within the mangrove system increasing and with that comes clearance of mangrove ecosystems and so we started this innovative idea of how we can build this championship, these ambassadors for change when it comes to protection and restoration of mangrove ecosystems and so out of that thought and with the engagement with our partners, the idea came up, why don't we have a contest?"

"We know there are people who are doing the rights things and so we are trying to identify those, get their designs from them, share that, and give them some of the exposure to show not only the government and policy makers but landowners, developers that there is a greener way to build within the mangrove landscape."

"There's a website that they can go to and they can follow the directions there on how to submit their applications. We have a QR code that they can scan so this is just a launch but we'll be doing some mobile events, going to different locations, San Pedro, Caye Caulker Hopkins, the key development hotspots and then we will also be sharing more broadly on social media just so that people know that this is happening and they can go to the official website for the Mangrove Challenge where they can submit their application."

"The challenge itself has two categories, one that is based on conservation and sustainability which is anyone who has taken steps to conserve mangroves because of benefits for biodiversity, risk mitigation, you name it. And then the second category is aesthetic and creativity, how do you build within the mangrove landscape that allows for beauty while continuing to get that function role of mangroves and usually for the aesthetics and creativity, that's where the businesses come in, the resorts, the hotels, people who do eco-tourism within mangrove ecosystems. The conservation category are some conservation organizations who create mangrove reserves for example, any person that owns a peace of land and says okay I don't want to develop this, I'll leave the mangroves there, I might put in a boardwalk and then they can market that."