Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Heaped on to all of the oth­er woes we are meant to di­gest on a week­ly ba­sis, we were all con­front­ed with yet an­oth­er hor­ror: im­ages of a bull­doz­er track­ing over a nest­ing ground for the glob­al­ly en­dan­gered Leatherback tur­tle. It was not so long ago, in rel­a­tive terms, that beach­es around the coun­try in­clud­ing Grande Riv­iere were open-air abat­toirs. Of­ten it was the prac­tice to dis­mem­ber the tur­tles, while still alive, with dull knives and cut­lass­es.

Decades of cam­paign­ing and ed­u­ca­tion have just be­gun to al­ter at­ti­tudes to­wards the Leather-back, notwith­stand­ing the oc­ca­sion­al ap­pear­ance on­line of some mo­ron surf­ing on a tur­tle's back. For Face­book users, the sight of earth-mov­ing equip­ment rolling over this pre­cious tur­tle nurs­ery was sim­ply too much to bear. What pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion for this can there be!

This was com­pound­ed with a head­line ex­tract­ed for ef­fect from a state­ment made by the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the EMA, Joth Singh: "On­ly a few hun­dred tur­tles lost." All hell broke loose af­ter that and it did not mat­ter that Dr Singh was sim­ply re­spond­ing to a wave of in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports sug­gest­ing that "thou­sands" of hatch­lings were de­stroyed. In­deed, one in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia out­let re­port­ed a very spe­cif­ic fig­ure: 20,000.

I am cer­tain that the CEO wasn't try­ing to min­imise the tragedy by quib­bling over fig­ures but it was al­ready too late. The out­cry, now sonorous, drowned out any at­tempts at ex­plain­ing what hap­pened at Grande Riv­iere. There are sev­er­al im­por­tant is­sues which ought to be dis­pas­sion­ate­ly con­sid­ered. The riv­er meant to be di­vert­ed changes course where it meets the sea reg­u­lar­ly.

There are hy­dro­dy­nam­ic forces at work here which led to the dras­tic shift in the di­rec­tion of the riv­er. It is en­tire­ly pos­si­ble that on a day of tor­ren­tial rain­fall, the swollen riv­er met a high tide which forced back the tor­rent. The riv­er changed course to run par­al­lel to the beach. In fact, the wa­ter erased a size­able area of the beach where the tur­tles lay their eggs. Just by this process of ero­sion, hatch­lings and eggs will have been swept away or swamped by the rag­ing wa­ters.

Pan­icked hote­liers, now fear­ing the loss of their prop­er­ties tee­ter­ing at the edge of the new riv­er bank, sum­moned help. Con­trary to on­line "re­ports," vil­lagers were con­sult­ed, along with the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty and the Forestry Di­vi­sion. It was de­cid­ed that the Min­istry of Works would con­struct a sand em­bank­ment us­ing ma­te­r­i­al from the beach to stave off any fur­ther en­croach­ment. Some­where along the way, the ex­er­cise went ter­ri­bly awry.

What can­not be de­nied is that if some­thing was not done to re­strain the riv­er, many more tur­tles would be lost as it would con­tin­ue to in­un­date and even­tu­al­ly flush out more buried nests, pos­si­bly scut­tling the rest of the sea­son. I am not con­vinced that us­ing sand as an em­bank­ment to hem in the riv­er is the best strat­e­gy that could have been de­ployed. In the rainy sea­son, I would hes­i­tate to use the very same ma­te­r­i­al to redi­rect the riv­er that it had washed away in the first place.

When vil­lagers no­ticed the me­an­der­ing ways of the wa­ter­course last year, it was re­port­ed to the Min­istry of Works but noth­ing was done. Noth­ing was done be­cause a re­tain­ing wall costs mil­lions of dol­lars and no­body gives a s--t about those "ya­hoos" in Grande Riv­iere. Had some­thing been done im­me­di­ate­ly all of this could have been avoid­ed.

Marc de Ver­teuil of Pa­pa Bois, an en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivism group, was ac­cused of sen­sa­tion­al­is­ing the in­ci­dent. The fact is few of us would be aware of what was hap­pen­ing on the north­east coast if Marc hadn't tak­en the time to go up there and post pic­tures on­line. The me­dia on­ly picked up the sto­ry be­cause of what he has been do­ing.

Many have sug­gest­ed that vil­lagers ought to have been giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to gath­er as many hatch­lings in the path of the bull­doz­er be­fore the earth­works be­gan. With­out hav­ing been there my­self, it is im­pos­si­ble to say whether this was a fea­si­ble strat­e­gy.

An­oth­er ma­jor ca­su­al­ty here was com­mu­ni­ca­tion, some­thing which the EMA has learnt the hard way. The ra­pid­i­ty with which in­for­ma­tion, whether false or ac­cu­rate, cir­cu­lates on­line de­mands a proac­tive re­sponse to events such as these. I would even sug­gest that a time­ly "mea cul­pa" could have di­min­ished the back­lash.

The Min­istry of Works must al­so ex­plain why af­ter hav­ing been made aware of the prob­lem sev­er­al months ago there was no re­sponse. Con­sid­er­ing that this beach is not just a crit­i­cal nest­ing site but al­so an im­por­tant eco-tourism re­source, one would ex­pect that no ex­pense would have been spared to ward off any threats to the beach.

Yes, at­tempts were be­ing made to stave off a huge dis­as­ter at the Grande Riv­iere Beach but se­ri­ous mis­takes were made. The au­thor­i­ties should em­brace the out­rage of the pop­u­la­tion as it demon­strates that the pub­lic is now in­vest­ed in the pro­tec­tion of the Leatherback tur­tle. Isn't that what we have fought for all along?