This is the fi­nal in a four-part pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries cour­tesy of the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) Small Grant Pro­gramme (SGP) at the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP). This weeks col­umn fo­cus­es on the Pip­ing Guan, en­dan­gered species en­dem­ic to Trinidad and To­ba­go.The GEF SGP pro­vides grants of up to US$50,000 to civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions for projects in bio-di­ver­si­ty, cli­mate change, in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, chem­i­cals and land degra­da­tion.

Most peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go have prob­a­bly nev­er heard the dis­tinc­tive call that has earned the Pawi (Pip­ile pip­ile) its al­ter­na­tive name, the Trinidad Pip­ing Guan.Yet it is a bird that is of glob­al and na­tion­al im­por­tance since it is en­dem­ic to the is­land of Trinidad and con­sid­ered to be crit­i­cal­ly en­dan­gered. In oth­er words, if it be­comes ex­tinct here, that will be the end of the species.

Con­cerned that such ex­tinc­tion could be­come a re­al­i­ty for many rea­sons–in­ad­e­quate of­fi­cial land use plan­ning de­ci­sions, over-hunt­ing, de­for­esta­tion and quar­ry­ing–the Guardian Life Wildlife Fund (GLWF) em­barked in 2010 on its Pride in Pawi project, a com­pre­hen­sive ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach pro­gramme to pro­mote greater aware­ness of this na­tion­al trea­sure and en­cour­age cit­i­zens to be­come more in­volved in its con­ser­va­tion.

Recog­nis­ing this as an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to its bio-di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion fo­cal area, the GEF SGP pro­vid­ed GLWF with a grant to fa­cil­i­tate the com­mu­ni­ty in­ter­ven­tion and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing as­pect of the project.

Be­tween 2010 and 2012, com­mu­ni­ty groups and in­di­vid­u­als in Bras­so Seco, Blan­chisseusse, Grande Riv­iere, Matu­ra and Matelot were ex­posed to a range of ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, both to em­pow­er them to pa­trol and map ar­eas that Paw­is were in­hab­it­ing and to pro­vide skills that would en­hance their oth­er con­ser­va­tion and liveli­hood ac­tiv­i­ties.

"Our teams learned da­ta-col­lec­tion skills in­clud­ing tran­sect, GPS, ac­cu­rate record-keep­ing and time­keep­ing," ex­plained Kevin Muhammed of the Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guide As­so­ci­a­tion, "and that meant that we could em­ploy them again lat­er on a leatherback tur­tle hatch­ling base­line sur­vey."

The com­mu­ni­ties al­so sug­gest­ed the in­tro­duc­tion of a First Aid com­po­nent to the train­ing, be­cause this would be valu­able, not just for the pa­trols, but al­so for the tour-guid­ing and oth­er tourism ac­tiv­i­ties that many of the groups are en­gaged in.The aware­ness work­shops at­tract­ed a wide range of in­ter­ests with­in each com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the hunters.As one par­tic­i­pant not­ed, one of the high­lights was "the way the hunters shared their in­for­ma­tion about the Pawi from dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties."

Project Of­fi­cer, Megan King-Fran­cis, al­so felt that the project had changed the at­ti­tude of hunters, not­ing that "some of them had not re­alised the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion or that hunt­ing might be con­tribut­ing to Pawi ex­tinc­tion."Re­spect­ing the val­ue of lo­cal knowl­edge and lead­er­ship, GLWF en­cour­aged each com­mu­ni­ty to de­vel­op its own strat­e­gy for en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and do­ing the pa­trols, an ap­proach praised by Den­nis Sam­my of Na­ture Seek­ers.

He said: "GLWF set the goal and bud­get but we had lee­way on the method. That's a good strat­e­gy for get­ting com­mu­ni­ties to work to­geth­er".The Com­mu­ni­ty Pawi Pa­trols had vary­ing suc­cess in sight­ing Paw­is. An im­por­tant find­ing from the for­est pa­trol maps was that wher­ev­er the Pawi was sight­ed, the for­est was in­tact, sup­port­ing con­cern that de­for­esta­tion is a key dri­ver of the di­min­ish­ing pop­u­la­tion.

While the project has left a strong lega­cy of en­hanced ca­pac­i­ty and a com­mit­ted group of com­mu­ni­ty Pawi guardians, Dr Car­ol James, chair of GLWF, sees this as just the be­gin­ning.He said: "We need to deep­en our ac­tiv­i­ties in the north of Trinidad and ex­tend these project ac­tiv­i­ties to com­mu­ni­ties in Cen­tral and South where the Pawi is found. As we learn more, we al­so recog­nise that we need ad­di­tion­al da­ta if we are to in­flu­ence pol­i­cy and be­hav­iour.

"And to keep the com­mu­ni­ties en­gaged, we must fo­cus on the po­ten­tial so­cio-eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of Pawi pro­tec­tion."Kevin Muhammed agrees: "We have recog­nised that there is re­al po­ten­tial for Pawi Tours," not­ing that posters and sig­nage for these are be­ing cre­at­ed.

More in­fo

If you are in­ter­est­ed in find­ing out more about the Guardian Life Wildlife Fund or con­tribut­ing to its Pride in Pawi project, see its web­site at http://www.glwildlife.org or con­tact Project Steer­ing Com­mit­tee Chair, Maria Ri­vas-McMil­lan at mfrivasmc@gmail.com.For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on ap­ply­ing for GEF SGP grants or if your com­pa­ny or pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion is in­ter­est­ed in part­ner­ing with the UNDP to men­tor or coach grantees of the GEF SGP, please vis­it: www.undp.org.tt/GEF-SGP/ or www.face­book.com/GEF­S­G­PTT .

Ap­pli­cants can con­tact us via email on reg­istry@undp.org.tt or call on 623 7056 ext. 252 or 254

If you wish to con­tribute to this guest se­ries, send in your ideas to Ira Math­ur at iras­room@gmail.com or cleaningupthemess@guardian.co.tt and join our Face­book page at www.face­book.com/cleaningupthemess?ref=ts