Der­ren Joseph

?Last Sat­ur­day night, Sal­ly and I de­cid­ed to take the chil­dren tur­tle-watch­ing. When we checked the Forestry Di­vi­sion (622-7476) in June, Matu­ra was al­ready booked up for the en­tire sea­son, a sign of how pop­u­lar tur­tle-watch­ing has be­come. So, we got per­mits for Grande Riv­iere in­stead. Our tour guide, Ty­rone, was en­ter­tain­ing, knowl­edge­able and ob­vi­ous­ly very pas­sion­ate.

That night in Grande Riv­iere was def­i­nite­ly one of the more mem­o­rable mo­ments of my life. Every­one in our group was so ex­cit­ed to see these huge, but gen­tle crea­tures, emerg­ing from the crash­ing waves. For­tu­nate­ly, we had good weath­er and the moon did an ex­cel­lent job of pro­vid­ing us with more than enough light to wit­ness this mir­a­cle of na­ture. We did not have enough light to take pic­tures, how­ev­er, and Ty­rone did not al­low flash pho­tog­ra­phy. Flash­ing cam­eras may up­set the an­i­mals.

Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have five tur­tle species: the leatherback, the green tur­tle, the log­ger­head, the Olive Ri­d­ley and the hawks­bill. All are clas­si­fied as en­dan­gered, with the leatherback and hawks­bill con­sid­ered crit­i­cal­ly en­dan­gered. The video play­ing in the wait­ing room of Grande Riv­iere Vis­i­tor Cen­tre said the leatherback tur­tle had been around for more than 100 mil­lion years; they could weigh more than a ton and swam tens of thou­sands of miles each year.

It is hum­bling to think that these large and gen­tle leatherbacks have been around for so long, and choose Trinidad as one of the few places on the en­tire plan­et to lay their eggs. This is tru­ly a blessed land. It is too easy to for­get how spe­cial our is­lands are. From what I ob­served, tur­tle-watch­ing ap­pears to be a crit­i­cal com­po­nent in dri­ving com­mu­ni­ty-based tourism in Grande Riv­iere.

There are tour guides, guest hous­es, eat­ing es­tab­lish­ments and bars that ben­e­fit from the in­flux of vis­i­tors. In the Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ment, tourism falls un­der "Fa­cil­i­tat­ing Com­pet­i­tive Busi­ness." It is a key part of the vi­sion for a di­ver­si­fied econ­o­my. The doc­u­ment goes on to say that "tourism can be com­mu­ni­ty-based, and has to con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to GDP."

Grande Riv­iere Vis­i­tor Cen­tre was of­fi­cial­ly opened by the Min­is­ter of Tourism in ear­ly June, so it is still quite new. It of­fers in­for­ma­tion and tours to:

�2 ob­serve nest­ing and hatch­ing sea tur­tles;

�2 take a hike through the rain­for­est to Homard Wa­ter­fall;

�2 vis­it the Alan Riv­er Gorge; or

�2 go bird-watch­ing.

The Vis­i­tor Cen­tre is a project of the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust, the Min­istry of Tourism, and BHP Bil­li­ton. Formed in 2006 to take ad­van­tage of the grow­ing eco­tourism mar­ket, the vi­sion of the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust (www.turtlevil­lagetrust.org) is to place Trinidad and To­ba­go as the pre­mier tur­tle tourism des­ti­na­tion glob­al­ly.

The trust was formed by five com­mu­ni­ty groups–Na­ture Seek­ers, M2M Net­work, Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guides As­so­ci­a­tion, and Save Our Tur­tles (SOS) To­ba­go. Last week, I was for­tu­nate enough to meet some­one from the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust. Per­son­al­ly, I am cu­ri­ous as to how com­mu­ni­ties find that del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween en­cour­ag­ing con­ser­va­tion and en­cour­ag­ing tourism.

Giv­en the sen­si­tiv­i­ty, sig­nif­i­cance and po­ten­tial of this as­pect of com­mu­ni­ty tourism, I was glad to find out that the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies is host­ing a tur­tle con­ser­va­tion, eco-tourism and sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment con­fer­ence.

It will be held at UWI's Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre on Ju­ly 28 and 29. The Web site (http://sta.uwi.edu/con­fer­ences/09/tur­tle/) notes that par­tic­i­pa­tion is open to schol­ars, pol­i­cy-mak­ers, grad­u­ate stu­dents, pro­fes­sion­als and all peo­ple in­ter­est­ed in the burn­ing is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with this theme.

Per­haps, this con­fer­ence would help guide an­swers to the many sci­en­tif­ic, eco­nom­ic, en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial ques­tions sur­round­ing tur­tle tourism. As al­ways, I end by say­ing that de­spite our chal­lenges, we are so blessed to live in this beau­ti­ful coun­try. We need to re­mem­ber and ac­knowl­edge just how much up­lift­ing work is be­ing done all around us. Let us con­tin­ue to have the au­dac­i­ty of hope in our coun­try, as we move to­wards Vi­sion 2020.