KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

In an ef­fort to im­prove eco-tourism in a north coast com­mu­ni­ty, tur­tle-friend­ly street­lights have been in­stalled in Grande Riv­iere in the vicin­i­ty of Mt Plaisir Es­tate Ho­tel on Hosang Street.

The ini­tia­tive was un­der­tak­en by the Had­co Group, along with the Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guides As­so­ci­a­tion (GRNT­GA), the Grande Riv­iere com­mu­ni­ty and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA).

It is part of on-go­ing ef­forts by the Na­tion­al Sea Tur­tle Task Force (NST­TF) to en­sure the long-term pro­tec­tion and en­hance­ment of the qual­i­ty of life ex­pe­ri­enced by the Leatherback tur­tles.

Had­co spokes­woman Var­isha Ram­baran said the project is part of the com­pa­ny’s thrust to­wards sus­tain­abil­i­ty and con­ser­va­tion.

“This can be seen through our ex­pan­sion in­to the re­cy­cling sec­tor in 2017, and most re­cent­ly the eco-tourism sec­tor through our lat­est Di­vi­sion, Ex­pe­ri­ences,” said Ram­baran.

“With Had­co Ex­pe­ri­ences at Asa Wright Na­ture Cen­tre and Mt Plaisir Es­tate Ho­tel, we hope to tru­ly make a dif­fer­ence by col­lab­o­rat­ing with the neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties and con­tribut­ing to ini­tia­tives such as these that have a pos­i­tive and mea­sur­able im­pact on con­ser­va­tion ef­forts.”

Dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the harm­ful ef­fect of street­lights on nest­ing sea tur­tles at the Grande Riv­iere beach be­gan be­tween the com­pa­ny and the NST­TF, in April 2022.

“Kevin Muham­mad of the GRNT­GA reached out to dis­cuss the ad­verse ef­fects that were be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced by the en­dan­gered species dur­ing their nest­ing pe­ri­ods and the need to re­duce the im­pact of light­ing on the nest­ing site by dark­en­ing the area, there­by pro­vid­ing pri­va­cy to the nest­ing tur­tles,” said the com­pa­ny.

Be­fore the in­stal­la­tion of the lights, the NST­TF was con­cerned that the nest­ing pat­terns of the tur­tles were be­ing dis­turbed by the light pol­lu­tion from the light waves of reg­u­lar street­light units. This caused them to be­come dis­ori­ent­ed or lost in­land, when seek­ing dark­er ar­eas to lay their eggs.

This led to stake­hold­er en­gage­ment to ex­plore po­ten­tial mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures. The so­lu­tion that was ar­rived at in­volved the con­glom­er­ate do­nat­ing 20 NXT Lite LED street­lights that emit a red glow to the hu­man eye, at a wave­length in­vis­i­ble to tur­tles. Sev­en­teen of the street­lights were in­stalled in the im­me­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the tur­tle-nest­ing site.

Grande Riv­iere is known as one of the largest Leatherback nest­ing site in the Caribbean. Dur­ing peak tur­tle nest­ing sea­son (March 1 to Au­gust 31), five of the sev­en sea tur­tle species found glob­al­ly re­turn to Trinidad’s beach­es.

The sea-crea­tures ho­n­our their time­less “fam­i­ly tra­di­tion” of re­turn­ing to the place where they were born to lay their eggs.