Previous
Land and Sea Park
WELCOME BAHAMAS - NASSAU, CABLE BEACH & PARADISE ISLAND - 2006
Land and Sea Park
The Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park is so beautiful it defies description. Eric Carey, Director of Parks and Science Liaison at the Bahamas National Trust, says the cays are "incredible gems, with the deep blue Exuma Sound, which is an extension of the Atlantic Ocean on one side and a thousand colours of light blue, greens, almost yellowish looking water because of the beautiful golden sand underneath..." Another observer, and one who would know, said the Exumas in 1931 were unquestionably "one of the outstanding creations of nature... the clearest water I have ever seen." The writer in this case was Tolstoy, not Count Lyoff Nikolayevitch Tolstoy, who wrote War and Peace, but his grandson, Colonel Ilia Tolstoy, who was in his day a world-renowned traveller, photographer and naturalist.
But when Tolstoy returned to the area after the Second World War, he was shocked. The indestructible water still sparkled in the warm Bahamian sun but the wildlife had been sadly decimated.
He found dead iguanas with 22-calibre bullet holes in them; corals and fish were under heavy pressure from recreational and commercial fishing. Conch, once large and plentiful, were small and few, and thriving bird populations had been decimated, the result of year-round hunting with no bag limits. Looking at the devastation, Tolstoy later wrote that he saw "the ghosts of Passenger Pigeons in the air."
So it was in the early 1950s that he and many others began talking about creating a protected reserve where the land and marine resources could regenerate in safety. Some of those were Arthur Vernay, Suydam Cutting and Colonel F A Franklyn, all members of the Society for the Protection of the Flamingo in The Bahamas; Richard H Pough of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Dr F G Walton Smith, Director of the Marine Laboratory at the University of Miami.
At about the same time in the 1950s, Prof Ray Carleton, a zoologist with Columbia University, approached the Bahamian government with the then-novel idea of creating an underwater park. When Tolstoy and Carleton met, they decided to combine their efforts, convincing the colonial government to open up an area in the Exumas for a year of scientific study. This was financed in part by the New York Zoological Society.
It was a rigorous study. Volunteers cut narrow paths on the larger cays so that scientists could study the area's plants and animals, some of which were endangered: iguana, hutia, the curly tailed lizard and the white crowned pigeon. Building on existing work, they catalogued the living resources not only of the cays but of the shallow sea around them, including corals, fishes, turtles, crustaceans and molluscs.
Their report called on the government to "ensure the perpetuity of those things that people come to see in The Bahamas, as well as to assure a lasting supply of those natural resources that are so necessary for the livelihood of Bahamians themselves." The government quickly passed legislation to establish the world's first land and sea park.
Only about five per cent (about nine square miles) of the total area of the park (176 square miles) is land. The rest is seabed covered by the warm Atlantic Ocean. It's located in the northern Exumas, a little north of dead centre in the archipelago, extending from Conch Cut in the south to Way Cay Cut in the north, a stretch of 22 miles. The park is eight miles wide, claiming the shallow waters of the Great Bahama Bank to the west and extending to the edge of the Exuma Sound to the east.
There are nine large cays, 50 smaller ones and innumerable islets and rocks in the tract. Three of the four largest cays - Shroud, Hawksbill and Waderick Wells (site of the park office) - are leased to the BNT and five others are privately owned: Cistern Cay, Soldier Cay, O'Brien's Cay, Bell Island and Little Bell Island.
Another cay, Hall's Pond, was privately owned by notorious Czech financier Viktor Kozeny. Kozeny created a furor when he put heavy construction machinery on the island and began building roads. In 1999, the government of former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham ordered Kozeny to stop and to restore the island to its original condition. Later, the government issued a "notice of possession," reclaiming Hall's Pond for the park. Today, the cay is slowly regenerating.
Conservationists note that national parks like the Land and Sea Park, which set aside and protect entire ecosystems, are especially important in The Bahamas where the underwater world is as fragile as it is complex and beautiful.
Few realize, for example, how essential are coral reefs, not only to countries such as The Bahamas that possess them, but to the world at large - comparable in importance to rainforests, say scientists.
Reefs are the reason The Bahamas islands exist, says marine biologist Thomas McGrath, who spoke with the Bahamas Handbook in 2001. "They are the only reason these islands exist."
As McGrath explained, The Bahamas is made entirely of calcium carbonate, of which up to 95 per cent is produced in one way or another by the reefs. The reefs are also the centre of marine life, including conch, grouper and crawfish, which are seafood staples in The Bahamas.
Commercial fishing, which employs about 9,500 Bahamians, contributes some $200 million or more to the national economy. And reef-based tourism, including diving and snorkelling, contributes even more.
As Lynn Holowesko, former Bahamas Ambassador for the Environment, and also a former president of the Bahamas National Trust, put it, "It is the environment that brings visitors and investors to our shores. It is the mother hen that lays the golden egg of tourism."
CONTACT INFORMATION
E-Mail: Click here
Internet: https://
Disclaimer:
Information in editorial and listings is subject to change at any time.