RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Right in the mid­dle of the ex­pan­sive Gordineau swamp lies five is­lands which are un­known to many and which re­main un­der-ex­plored. They are part of the hy­dro­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal make-up of the Oropouche Wet­lands.

Sit­ting on top of 7,835 acres of swamp, the is­lands are of­fi­cial­ly named in a 1990 Lands and Sur­vey map tak­en from the Min­istry of Works. Moses Is­land seems to be the largest com­pris­ing 24 acres, while Alex­is Is­land is less than four acres. There is Gin­ger Is­land where large amounts of gin­ger once grew dur­ing the pre-In­de­pen­dence era and Av­o­cat Is­land. The oth­er is­land named Mad­hoo has been split in half by the New Cut Chan­nel, a man-made riv­er which was dug by the Er­ic Williams gov­ern­ment in 1962, as a means of drain­ing the Oropouche Basin.

Ronald Bin­da who has worked with in­ter­na­tion­al tourist groups for decades said when­ev­er any­one hears of "Five Is­lands", they think of the Bo­cas Is­lands which lie in the Bo­cas del Dragón (Drag­ons' Mouth) in west Trinidad.

"Very few know about our Five Is­lands right here in the swamp. It's a trea­sure that could be de­vel­oped and shared with the rest of the world," he said.

Guardian Me­dia's in­tre­pid team took a jour­ney by boat to see Five Is­lands our­selves. Leav­ing from the Su­dama Teerath site at Pluck Road, Wood­land, the team went down the New Cut Chan­nel. With Cap­tain Kim­raj Ram­lochan at the helm, the team passed a pub­lic ceme­tery where the in­den­tured im­mi­grants once buried their dead. Bin­da said the ceme­tery dates back to 1897 and is sit­u­at­ed on a five-acre par­cel of land. His fam­i­ly's plot of land, giv­en to them in lieu of a re­turn pas­sage to In­dia, stands on the op­po­site side of the ceme­tery.

"Long ago, peo­ple used to use ca­noes and bring their dead rel­a­tives to be buried at the ceme­tery," Bin­da said. Say­ing the ceme­tery could be a his­tor­i­cal site, Bin­da not­ed that buri­als ceased af­ter 1962 when the con­struc­tion of the New Cut Chan­nel made the ceme­tery in­ac­ces­si­ble.

He said over 100 acres of prime agri­cul­tur­al lands were lost when the New Cut Chan­nel was built. "My fam­i­ly lost over 30 acres. The riv­er de­stroyed the arable lands in this area. What Williams should have done was to put a gate to block off the salt wa­ter from en­ter­ing the arable lands but this did not hap­pen and it led to the de­struc­tion of the Oropouche La­goon," Bin­da said.

When the Guardian came up­on the first is­land owned by an in­di­vid­ual known on­ly as Mad­hoo, co­conut and man­go trees peeped out of the swamp. Bin­da ex­plained that 40 years ago, peo­ple plant­ed short crops on the is­land.

"There were lots of an­i­mals there. This pri­vate 21-acre is­land sur­round­ed by rivers and man­groves could be­come a tourist site if mar­ket­ed prop­er­ly," Bin­da said.

He rec­om­mend­ed that bird watch­ing fa­cil­i­ties be set up on the is­lands. The swamp has sev­er­al species of ex­ot­ic birds in­clud­ing the crane hawk, the green-throat­ed man­go bird, the os­prey hawk, white egrets, blue herons, and T&T's na­tion­al bird the Scar­let Ibis.

It is al­so the breed­ing ground for 29 species of fish and nu­mer­ous species of crus­tacean crabs, oys­ters, mam­mals, ro­dents, rep­tiles, am­phib­ians, and birds. Dur­ing the riv­er tour, sev­er­al caimans were seen bask­ing in the shade of the man­groves.

Gin­ger Is­land was next and the smoke from a camp­fire on the is­land hov­ered over­head.

Bin­da said some­times peo­ple camp on Gin­ger is­land.

"Dur­ing Car­ni­val and East­er, you can­not find a space there. Peo­ple who are fa­mil­iar with the swamp come here to cook and fish. They some­times camp out for the week­end." Crops no longer grow on Gin­ger is­land be­cause of the in­fil­tra­tion of salt wa­ter in­to the lands.

Af­ter a three-kilo­me­tre ride down the New Cut Chan­nel, the St Johns Riv­er met the Gordineau Riv­er. This is be­lieved to be the salti­est part of the swamp and it is here that the rare red man­groves grow abun­dant­ly.

Un­like oth­er swamps in T&T, Bin­da said the Oropouche swamp had sev­er­al hun­dred acres of the red man­grove which is un­der threat glob­al­ly. The trees re­sem­bled a for­est rather than a swamp when seen from afar.

"I be­lieve the Oropouche swamp is the on­ly swamp in T&T which has red man­groves. We are for­tu­nate here that the trees have grown to be this tall," Bin­da said as we passed an ex­panse of the trees. Un­like the white man­groves, the trunks of the red man­grove trees were tall and state­ly. Some of the trees were over 30 feet. The trees have prop roots, which not on­ly car­ry wa­ter and oxy­gen to the un­der­ground root net­work but al­so form a strong sup­port sys­tem which al­lows the tree to stand in soft mud and shal­low wa­ter.

Af­ter pass­ing the ex­panse of man­groves along the heav­i­ly salty Gordineau Riv­er, Ram­lochan showed us Moses Is­land, where there were lots of co­conut and man­go trees.

Bin­da said the five is­lands in the swamp had scope for tourism.

"I have trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly around the world and I have seen places where is­lands like these have been mar­ket­ed for eco-tourism. At a time when our coun­try is fac­ing chal­lenges with for­eign ex­change, we can ben­e­fit great­ly," Bin­da said.

The fi­nal stop was at the 14-gate pump house. Built in the 1920s, the sluice gates keep out the salt wa­ter from the Oropouche wet­lands. It is con­trolled man­u­al­ly but of­ten the worn gates break down. On­ly ten out of the 14 gates were func­tion­al. Bin­da said he was will­ing to take tourists on tours through­out the wet­lands.

Wet­lands a prime spot for tourism, no $$ for plan—coun­cil­lor

Coun­cil­lor for San Fran­cique/Wood­land Dood­nath Mayrhoo said while the idea to pro­mote the swamp is­lands for eco-tourism was a good one, the cor­po­ra­tion did not have any mon­ey to ex­e­cute the idea.

"As a cor­po­ra­tion, we don't have fund­ing for these types of projects. This will fall un­der the Tourism Min­istry. We have noth­ing in place for the ad­vance­ment of tourism on the wet­lands. On­ly re­cent­ly we de­cid­ed there was scope for tourism but we have to put a pro­pos­al in place," Mayrhoo said.

He in­vit­ed the Min­istry of Tourism to come to the swamp and take a tour of the is­lands.

"If this plan is ex­e­cut­ed it will bring rev­enue to the com­mu­ni­ty. Boat own­ers will be able to take peo­ple on tours. It will en­cour­age em­ploy­ment be­cause agri­cul­ture is to­tal­ly dead in the Wood­land area," Mayrhoo said.

He not­ed that un­em­ploy­ment ranged be­tween 60 to 65 per cent in the San Fran­cique and Wood­land ar­eas.

"There are no in­dus­tries. The lo­cal con­trac­tors from 2015 to now have had no projects com­ing their way. Con­struc­tion ground­ed to a halt and they are wait­ing for some kind of job to get by. If you go to the Su­dama Teerath site you can see 15 to 20 youths sit­ting there idly. There is no work at all," Mayrhoo said.

He said the cor­po­ra­tion was plan­ning to set up a park at the Mos­qui­to Creek cre­ma­tion site on a va­cant piece of land. "We in­tend to plant some trees and build a nice park there but we will look for­ward to the de­vel­op­ment of tourism in the wet­lands as well," Mayrhoo added.

Ef­forts to con­tact Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful as calls to his cel­lu­lar and What­sapp mes­sages went unan­swered. He al­so did not re­spond to Face­book mes­sages.

Any­one want­i­ng to vis­it the swamp can con­tact Bin­da at 765-5100.