The president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, took steps this week to secure and protect the newly found archaeological site of a “lost city” in the eastern part of his country, after concerns were raised in an exclusive National Geographic article earlier this month about threats from potential looters and illegal loggers.

The site, first identified in an aerial survey in 2012 using a technology called lidar, was confirmed by a ground expedition last month to a remote jungle area of Mosquitia in eastern Honduras. The expedition, which included archaeologists from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History (IHAH) as well as American scientists, mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, and an earthen pyramid. They also uncovered a cache