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Tonight is a peculiar foreshadow for what's to come.
Tonight is the golf cart parade. Practically all of Great Guana Cay’s 170 residents dress their carts in Christmas lights and flourish. Dressed as clowns or jokers or Santa, they parade around the islet’s narrow streets in the dark. This bright twisting dragon slithers around the village, filled with chatter, reunion, laughter and hellos.
Good will, generosity and warm hearts are endemic qualities on Guana Cay. Perhaps optimism is required in such places, where electricity blackouts are common and life is held in check by the elements. Just a day ago, the news of the Boxer Day Tsunami and a hundred-thousand deaths made its way to this hurricane-battered island. It will be months before much of the devastation is attributed to poor management of coastal mangroves, which protect human settlements from vicious winds.
About 90 of the residents of Guana Cay are descendents of its original English loyalist settlers. The other 80 are expats in flip-flops. Painters who ride dirty old red bikes to work, or sailors who ironically found paradise on a quiet leeward beach.
Paradise to these people is a slice of the old Bahamas; antique homes, sandy lanes, no bull. Guana Cay earns its keep from birdwatchers, divers, sports-fishermen, shell-collectors, second-homers and rental construction. Not much happens on Great Guana Cay, and nothing ever will. Well, at least that's what you think.
In reality, a lot of things are happening at Great Guana Cay. A lot of creepy, under the table things. At the center of a raging controversy is an admirable young marine ecologist named Kathleen: a good scientist whose life's work is centered on conservation and the impact of developments on tropical eco-regions.
Under normal circumstances, this might be the beginning of a nice environmental article about a young, energetic woman saving fish. But it is much more complicated than that.
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Great Guana Cay is a thin, six mile island in the Northern Bahamas.
The island's inhabitants, who settled here 200 years ago, are employed in fishing and cottage industry tourism.
The island's coral reef is of international importance as one of the most intact surviving elkhorn/staghorn coral communities in the world.
The inhabitants began fighting tooth and nail to save their island's coral reef and mangroves from destruction after hearing of plans for a golf megadevelopment on their tiny barrier reef island.
Hundreds of the world's most revered coral reef scientists and marine ecologists, as well as almost every single Bahamian environmental organization, have banded together to try to stop the Baker's Bay Golf & Ocean Club (Discovery Land Company) from realizing completion.
The proposed 585 unit, 180 slip marina, tennis courts, hotel, destination spa and championship golf course were pushed through the Bahamian central government with no local consent and without proper permits in a land grab (including of local public land designated for use by Bahamians) of unbelievable proportion. In one of the most amazing and unique environmental stories in history, the islanders have brought the developer, and the Bahamian government, to task. The small island is now waging a bitter legal battle with the government and the developers.
Rise Up Sweet Island compiles the viewpoints of the Bahamian and international marine conservation community and presents documents, evidence and history for all interested parties.
Notes from the Road is a travelogue which covers environmental and cultural issues around North America, the Caribbean and Europe.
National Geographic Magazine supports anti-Megadevelopment movements in Abaco and Bimini in new article on shark conservation.
ReEarth
SharkLab
Restrict Bimini Bay
Mangrove Action Project
Global Coral Reef Alliance
Caribbean Conservation Corps
Notes from the Sea
75% of Bahamians on Great Guana Cay signed a petition this winter against Baker's Bay Club. Three years later, resistance is strong.
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