Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Part 3

There has been some clam­our for my com­ments on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments in pol­i­tics, more specif­i­cal­ly the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle. There was a part of me ea­ger to oblige but I was dis­suad­ed by one im­por­tant re­al­i­sa­tion. We seem to re­vis­it these is­sues every week with each "new" cri­sis. Our crises are nev­er re­al­ly new, just re­vamped or re­born.

In T&T we seem to have an end­less ca­pac­i­ty to ca­vort in our own tragedies with­out ever con­tem­plat­ing a mean­ing­ful ex­it strat­e­gy. "Look what dey gone and do now! Dis is ah dic­ta­tor­ship we livin' in. Whey all dem writ­ers who was talkin' Man­nin' bad, whey dey is now?"

It has tak­en long enough, but now that we have re­alised that sim­ply chang­ing a gov­ern­ment does not al­ter our cir­cum­stances the ques­tion re­mains unan­swered: what are we as in­di­vid­u­als pre­pared to do to pull this na­tion back from the abyss? There are colum­nists enough who will of­fer opin­ion and analy­sis on the lat­est bac­cha­nal. I would like to con­tin­ue with the thought I be­gan three weeks ago on sus­tain­able eco-tourism as a vi­able path away from our petro de­pen­den­cy.

It has been said be­fore but bears re­peat­ing: the wide di­ver­si­ty of wildlife habi­tats in a rel­a­tive­ly small ge­o­graph­ic area de­mands a long hard look at eco-tourism. The Ca­roni and Nar­i­va Swamps have gar­nered the li­on's share of at­ten­tion but there are many oth­er man­grove habi­tats in this coun­try which are equal­ly in­trigu­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, they have not at­tract­ed the sort of pro­tec­tion that the afore­men­tioned habi­tats have earned and con­se­quent­ly they are un­der sus­tained threat from de­vel­op­ment.

Many of you may not be fa­mil­iar with the swamp at Ica­cos. What you should know is that this rich habi­tat sup­ports an in­cred­i­ble di­ver­si­ty of wildlife. At cer­tain times of the year large flocks of black-bel­lied whistling ducks can be seen wad­ing in the shal­low wa­ter. There are herons of every va­ri­ety and sprite­ly marsh birds flit about with the speed of drag­on­flies. The state­ly great egret can be seen from a dis­tance pa­trolling the tall grass­es, ut­ter­ing the in­ter­mit­tent kraaaak.

Quite re­cent­ly, there was great ex­cite­ment on­line about the dis­cov­ery that the great egret ap­pears to be nest­ing in Eng­land. This is a com­mon bird in Trinidad that is rou­tine­ly ig­nored. The ex­panse of still wa­ter mir­rors the slow mov­ing clouds and azure sky. The Ica­cos Swamp is al­so a favoured lo­ca­tion of mi­gra­to­ry birds and you are sure to see the ma­jes­tic os­prey or fish hawk cir­cling over­head and mak­ing its oc­ca­sion­al clum­sy plunge in­to the wa­ter to snag an un­wary fish in its pow­er­ful talons.

Can you imag­ine tak­ing a lei-sure­ly dri­ve down to Ica­cos and see­ing all that I have de­scribed out of your ve­hi­cle win­dows? We are fond of say­ing, "Tri­nis just don't know what we have here." This is so true of the Ica­cos Swamp as mo­torists speed through this breath­tak­ing land­scape with­out an io­ta of cu­rios­i­ty about the spec­ta­cle laid out be­fore them.

We may not care but there are many out­siders who would be thrilled to bits to be im­mersed in such wild splen­dour. The sto­ry is much the same at Or­ange Val­ley on the west coast of Trinidad. I was ab­solute­ly blown away by the num­ber of bird species out there. The mud­flats at Or­ange Val­ley are al­so feed­ing grounds for many mi­gra­to­ry birds in­clud­ing the fla-min­go.

One chal­lenge of turn­ing these raw lo­ca­tions in­to vis­i­tor-friend­ly sites is ac­cess. Most bird en­thu­si­asts are al­so pho­tog­ra­phers and an ide­al sit­u­a­tion for them is to get close to their sub­jects in as un­ob­tru­sive a man­ner as pos­si­ble. This is where the Tourism De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny could in­ter­vene.

Con­sid­er­a­tion could be giv­en to con­struct­ing board­walks in these ar­eas, al­low­ing vis­i­tors to tru­ly ex­pe­ri­ence all that Or­ange Val­ley has to of­fer. Eco-tourism goes be­yond that, and must in­volve the com­mu­ni­ty. The vil­lagers of Or­ange Val­ley could host guests in a sim­ple vis­i­tors cen­tre, serve lo­cal dish­es and per­haps sell hand­i­craft re­flec­tive of the ex­pe­ri­ence.

These are just rough ideas, there is no one-size-fits-all tem­plate. Go­ing back to the Ica­cos Swamp, per­haps ob­ser­va­tion plat­forms could be con­struct­ed just off the road­way and equipped with bird blinds so that the wild-life is not too dis­turbed by the glare of cam­era lens­es. Nat­u­ral­ly, there would be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the res­i­dents of Ica­cos to ben­e­fit here.

A dri­ve down to the south­west­ern penin­su­la can be two and a half to three hours, de­pend­ing on the traf­fic so there will be need for ac­com­mo­da­tions and food. As it stands, the way com­mu­ni­ties use man­groves is by pulling every last crab out of its hole and by slash­ing man­grove roots to ex­tract oys­ters grow­ing on them. These are un­sus­tain­able prac­tices that will even­tu­al­ly de­stroy a re­source that can sup­port the wider com­mu­ni­ty, not just the crab catch­ers.

These com­mu­ni­ties can cre­ate their own lo­cal economies by pro­tect­ing and us­ing what is all around them. State sup­port is of course need­ed, but the push must start at home.