Project Operations

Husband and wife team, Ed & Debi Willoughby, founded the non-profit company Jungle Encounters and created the Belize Wild Cat Project. They volunteer their time and pay their own travel expenses. They manage the operations of the project and daily tasks.

Bettie Auch is a business manager for the project. She helps with community outreach, education and assists with the daily tasks.

Sipriano Canti is our field guide and camera manager in the jungle. He was born and raised in Belize and has protected Belize's flora and fauna for many years.

We also work with local park rangers when scouting out areas for trail camera stations.

The amount of data we collect and the length of time to collect it all depend on how many working trail cameras we have in the field. The more cameras we have, the more area we can cover in a shorter amount of time. We have run this project with as few as 20 working cameras, with an average of 50+ cameras in the field at one time.

The main cost associated with this project is the equipment expense. Due to the humid, wet, tropical weather we lose on average 20% of our equipment each year because the dampness gets inside the electronics and kills them. We usually replace 1 GPS tracker and 10-20 cameras each year, for a total cost of approximately $3,500USD a year in just equipment. 

This project is run on donations from people like you, small grants and local business support, without this support the project would cease to exist.

1. Donate money or equipment - as mentioned above we are constantly replacing our equipment. There are certain brands of trail cameras that work best for this project and environment. If you are interested in sending us some equipment please email us for more information at Debi@BelizeWildCats.com.  If you would rather support this project with a donation you can send money via paypal to the same email address.

2. You can sponsor one of our research sites. Please email us for details on yearly sponsor costs, they range from $3,500-$10,000USD per year.

3. If you have a facility, you can host one of our fundraisers! Again, email us for more information.

Jungle Encounters is a registered USA non profit 501(c)3 organization, EIN # 82-2129994. If you donation to our cause, you will receive a donation letter at the end of the year to give to your tax accountant because your donation is tax deductible.