An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The push to turn Trinidad’s wet­lands and oth­er nat­ur­al at­trac­tions in­to high-val­ue eco­tourism prod­ucts is fac­ing grow­ing con­cern among tourism op­er­a­tors and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists: whether some new-style boat tours are putting en­ter­tain­ment ahead of con­ser­va­tion.

The is­sue has sur­faced around the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary, where op­er­a­tors have in­tro­duced on-wa­ter din­ing and oth­er ex­pe­ri­ences, but com­plaints have emerged about al­co­hol con­sump­tion, noise, lit­ter and vis­i­tor be­hav­iour.

Tourism op­er­a­tors are not call­ing for the end of these ex­pe­ri­ences. In­stead, they want clear rules gov­ern­ing what can and can­not hap­pen in­side pro­tect­ed ar­eas, along with stronger en­force­ment.

The con­cern is gain­ing im­por­tance as eco­tourism has been iden­ti­fied by the Min­istry of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism as one of the six ar­eas tar­get­ed for growth.

Lor­raine Pouchet, T&T In­com­ing Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, said Trinidad could not pro­mote eco­tourism while al­low­ing the nat­ur­al as­sets sup­port­ing that in­dus­try to be de­grad­ed.

“The Bird Sanc­tu­ary is not for par­ties. The Bird Sanc­tu­ary is not for fetes. The Bird Sanc­tu­ary is not for al­co­hol. The Bird Sanc­tu­ary is not for that type of thing,” she said.

Pro­tect the prod­uct

Pouchet said the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary and the Nar­i­va Swamp are among the coun­try’s strongest eco­tourism as­sets and need to be pro­tect­ed if T&T is se­ri­ous about at­tract­ing vis­i­tors who want na­ture-based ex­pe­ri­ences.

She said the Gov­ern­ment’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of eco­tourism as a pri­or­i­ty cre­ates an oblig­a­tion to main­tain the qual­i­ty of the sites be­ing mar­ket­ed.

“Any­body who comes to Trinidad wants to vis­it the Ca­roni Sanc­tu­ary,” Pouchet said. “Any­body in­ter­est­ed in eco­tourism, that’s one of the first places of call when they hit Trinidad.”

The is­sue is not the in­tro­duc­tion of new ex­pe­ri­ences, she said, but the ab­sence of clear stan­dards around how those ex­pe­ri­ences should be con­duct­ed.

Pouchet re­called that dur­ing the COVID-19 shut­down, lo­cal op­er­a­tors had to find new ways to keep do­mes­tic tourism alive. Nanan Tours de­vel­oped break­fast tours and lat­er din­ner ex­pe­ri­ences on pri­vate boats, cre­at­ing an al­ter­na­tive way for vis­i­tors to ex­pe­ri­ence the swamp.

The con­cept gained pop­u­lar­i­ty and was sub­se­quent­ly adopt­ed by oth­er op­er­a­tors.

The con­cerns have al­so been raised di­rect­ly with the Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion in a writ­ten com­plaint from a mem­ber of the pub­lic who at­tend­ed a Casa Tours ex­pe­ri­ence at the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary on April 18.

The com­plainant said the tour was found through Tourism Trinidad Ltd’s month­ly tourism sched­ule, cre­at­ing the im­pres­sion that the op­er­a­tor had been vet­ted and was com­ply­ing with the rel­e­vant re­quire­ments.

Dur­ing the tour, the com­plainant said un­lim­it­ed al­co­holic bev­er­ages and cock­tails were served to pa­trons, while there was no vis­i­ble liquor li­cence or food badge dis­played.

The com­plainant not­ed a ques­tion about the li­cence to serve al­co­hol was met with laugh­ter from a per­son iden­ti­fied as be­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with the op­er­a­tion, while the al­co­hol ser­vice con­tin­ued.

Al­lis­ter Nanan, di­rec­tor of Nanan Tours, said the orig­i­nal idea was de­signed to give peo­ple a dif­fer­ent way to ex­pe­ri­ence the swamp while main­tain­ing its char­ac­ter as a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed and ed­u­ca­tion­al at­trac­tion.

The prob­lem, he said, came when some op­er­a­tors be­gan adding larg­er quan­ti­ties of al­co­hol and a par­ty at­mos­phere to the ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Our com­pa­ny is more fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed,” Nanan said. “We try to push the ed­u­ca­tion part of it.”

Nanan said com­plaints about the be­hav­iour of some vis­i­tors have reached mem­bers of the Tour Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion and have al­so been raised with tourism of­fi­cials.

He said the con­cern ex­tends be­yond al­co­hol it­self to its im­pact on the be­hav­iour of vis­i­tors, the noise gen­er­at­ed on boats and the po­ten­tial ef­fect on sen­si­tive nat­ur­al ar­eas.

“This is not a call to end this style of boat­ing or tourism,” the op­er­a­tors’ po­si­tion states. “Rather, it is a call for stronger man­age­ment and en­force­ment.”

A tourism op­por­tu­ni­ty

HAD­CO Ex­pe­ri­ences chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer John Hadad said the stakes are much high­er than a dis­pute be­tween com­pet­ing tour op­er­a­tors.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment is an eco­nom­ic as­set, he said, and eco­tourism can at­tract vis­i­tors pre­pared to spend more for au­then­tic ex­pe­ri­ences in pro­tect­ed ar­eas.

Hadad point­ed to the coun­try’s wet­lands and bio­di­ver­si­ty, in­clud­ing the im­por­tance of its forests and bats to eco­log­i­cal sys­tems.

He ex­plained that the Ca­roni Swamp’s con­ser­va­tion his­to­ry al­so demon­strates why the area can­not be treat­ed sim­ply as an­oth­er en­ter­tain­ment venue.

The Nanan fam­i­ly has played a long­stand­ing role in the pro­tec­tion of the swamp and the Scar­let Ibis, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al bird. That con­ser­va­tion work helped es­tab­lish the sanc­tu­ary as an im­por­tant pro­tect­ed area and tourism at­trac­tion.

Hadad said there is a spe­cif­ic way nat­ur­al as­sets should be pre­sent­ed to vis­i­tors.

“There’s a cer­tain type of be­hav­iour that has to be af­ford­ed,” he said. “Not every­thing is every­where.”

For him, loud mu­sic, heavy drink­ing and a par­ty at­mos­phere have no place in a sen­si­tive bird-watch­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

“Noise is the en­e­my of birds,” Hadad said.

He ar­gued that there is room for cel­e­bra­tions, wed­dings, din­ners and oth­er events in nat­ur­al set­tings, but these ac­tiv­i­ties should be de­signed around the en­vi­ron­ment rather than re­quir­ing the en­vi­ron­ment to ac­com­mo­date a par­ty.

The dis­tinc­tion is im­por­tant for a coun­try seek­ing to de­vel­op tourism be­yond tra­di­tion­al sun, sea and sand of­fer­ings.

Eco­tourism de­pends on the nat­ur­al re­source re­main­ing at­trac­tive. If wildlife is dis­turbed, sites are lit­tered, or vis­i­tors as­so­ciate pro­tect­ed ar­eas with par­ties rather than con­ser­va­tion, the tourism prod­uct it­self can be weak­ened.

Pouchet al­so point­ed to To­ba­go’s Buc­coo Reef and oth­er nat­ur­al at­trac­tions as ex­am­ples of the need to pre­serve the core ex­pe­ri­ence while de­vel­op­ing com­mer­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties around it.

She warned that the coun­try could re­peat what has hap­pened in oth­er des­ti­na­tions if it fails to es­tab­lish stan­dards ear­ly.

Pouchet cit­ed Ch­aguara­mas and near­by is­land ex­cur­sions as an ex­am­ple of how sight­see­ing, his­to­ry and en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ences can grad­u­al­ly give way to par­ty-fo­cused tours.

She said op­er­a­tors once of­fered vis­i­tors op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore is­lands, caves and beach­es while learn­ing about the his­to­ry and en­vi­ron­ment. In­creas­ing­ly, she said, the mar­ket has moved to­wards par­ty boats.

The con­cern is that the same shift could oc­cur in the Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary.

Rules, not a ban

Navin Kalpoo, own­er of Kalpoo Tours, which col­lab­o­rates with Casa Tours on some ex­pe­ri­ences, re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that his op­er­a­tion pro­motes ex­ces­sive drink­ing or breach­es en­vi­ron­men­tal stan­dards.

He said his com­pa­ny al­lows lim­it­ed al­co­hol in some ex­pe­ri­ences, but does not per­mit ex­ces­sive con­sump­tion.

Kalpoo said clients may some­times bring a bot­tle of wine or re­quest a light al­co­holic bev­er­age as part of a cel­e­bra­tion, while the com­pa­ny may of­fer a cock­tail for cer­tain ex­pe­ri­ences.

“We al­ways tell them, not the amount. You can’t walk with an ex­ces­sive amount,” he out­lined.

Kalpoo al­so dis­put­ed claims that his op­er­a­tion al­lows ex­ces­sive noise.

He said his team mon­i­tors the vol­ume and will move groups away from sen­si­tive ar­eas if nec­es­sary.

The big­ger prob­lem, he ar­gued, is that there are no suf­fi­cient­ly clear rules set­ting out ex­act­ly what is per­mit­ted.

“There aren’t rules of how loud is loud, how much is enough, and how close or far we should be,” Kalpoo stressed.

He said his com­pa­ny has been in­volved in pa­trols, clean-ups and main­te­nance and has an in­ter­est in pro­tect­ing the area be­cause its long-term busi­ness de­pends on the sanc­tu­ary re­main­ing vi­able.

Kalpoo al­so ac­cused com­peti­tors of try­ing to un­der­mine his op­er­a­tion, al­le­ga­tions he said were dri­ven by com­mer­cial ri­val­ry. He strong­ly de­nied that ex­ces­sive al­co­hol con­sump­tion takes place on his tours.

Eco­tourism ex­pert Courte­nay Rooks agreed that con­trolled con­sump­tion is dif­fer­ent from al­low­ing an un­re­strict­ed par­ty at­mos­phere. He said a lim­it­ed amount of al­co­hol for adults could be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in an ap­pro­pri­ate set­ting, pro­vid­ed vis­i­tors un­der­stood that they were en­ter­ing a sen­si­tive wildlife en­vi­ron­ment.

What he re­jects is un­lim­it­ed drink­ing. Rooks said vis­i­tors drink­ing heav­i­ly could be­come loud­er and be­have in ways that dis­turb wildlife or cre­ate safe­ty risks.

He al­so op­posed mu­sic be­ing played dur­ing tours in the sanc­tu­ary. His po­si­tion is not that peo­ple should be pre­vent­ed from en­joy­ing spe­cial oc­ca­sions in the swamp.

Wed­dings, din­ners and birth­days can take place, he said, pro­vid­ed vis­i­tors main­tain a lev­el of re­spect for the en­vi­ron­ment.

The chal­lenge now is for the au­thor­i­ties to de­fine those bound­aries.

The Ca­roni Bird Sanc­tu­ary falls un­der the Forestry Di­vi­sion, while tourism pro­mo­tion sits with­in the tourism port­fo­lio. Pouchet said that over­lap makes co­or­di­na­tion es­sen­tial.

She said Tourism Trinidad Ltd had pre­vi­ous­ly been alert­ed to com­plaints, but she was un­sure what ac­tion had fol­lowed.

Nanan al­so raised con­cerns about en­force­ment, ar­gu­ing that au­thor­i­ties too of­ten re­spond af­ter prob­lems emerge in­stead of es­tab­lish­ing stan­dards be­fore­hand.

The op­er­a­tors’ call is there­fore for a co­or­di­nat­ed frame­work in­volv­ing tourism, forestry, tour op­er­a­tors and oth­er rel­e­vant agen­cies.

That frame­work would need to cov­er al­co­hol, noise, waste dis­pos­al, ves­sel op­er­a­tions and vis­i­tor con­duct.