For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville (ER­IC) and six ex­pe­ri­enced tour guides have been named the Na­tion­al En­er­gy Globe Award Win­ner for Trinidad and To­ba­go, 2018.

The in­ter­na­tion­al award seeks to iden­ti­fy projects that fo­cus on the ef­fi­cient use of en­er­gy, the re­sources’ re­newa­bil­i­ty and con­ser­va­tion.

ER­IC’s out­stand­ing eco-tourism ex­pe­ri­ence pro­gramme ‘For­est Check’, beat com­peti­tors from 182 par­tic­i­pat­ing coun­tries who had sub­mit­ted 2,000 projects.

ER­IC and ex­pe­ri­enced for­est tour guides Ju­nior Thomas, Har­ris Mc­Don­ald, Dar­ling­ton Chance, New­ton George, Ja­son Radix and William Trim where re­spon­si­ble for the project.

Ac­cord­ing to Lanya San­dovich, For­est Check’s co-or­di­na­tor, the pro­to­col for the eco-tourism ini­tia­tive was de­signed for the five tour guides to iden­ti­fy and list the species in To­ba­go Main Ridge For­est Re­serve.

The Main Ridge For­est Re­serve is the old­est trop­i­cal rain­for­est re­serve in the West­ern Hemi­sphere and a sig­nif­i­cant part of To­ba­go’s ecosys­tem.

She said the study was un­der­tak­en be­cause the Main Ridge “is threat­ened by pol­lu­tion, over-ex­ploita­tion and cli­mate change.”

She said the sit­u­a­tion had to be ad­dressed as the area pro­vides is­landers with “clean wa­ter, healthy soils, fresh air, ide­al recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties, in­come op­por­tu­ni­ties from eco­tourism, med­ical­ly and cul­tur­al­ly im­por­tant plants and clays, and acts as a car­bon sink.”

Ex­plain­ing For­est Check, she said is “a mon­i­tor­ing method us­ing an eco-tourism ex­pe­ri­ence (that) is in­no­v­a­tive and us­es a replic­a­ble sur­vey tool where­by trained tour guides and tourists par­tic­i­pate in a na­ture walk en­hanced by en­vi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing.”

The mon­i­tor­ing tool col­lects in­for­ma­tion on for­est health and cli­mate change and gen­er­ates rev­enue for com­mu­ni­ties, she added.

For­est Check To­ba­go was fund­ed through the UNDP, GEF, Small Grants Pro­gramme in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) and the Project Co­or­di­na­tion Unit of the Im­prov­ing For­est and Pro­tect­ed Area Man­age­ment (IF­PAM) of the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion (FAO) and Trinidad al­so as­sist­ed with the project.