Originally, Discovery Land Company's public relations campaign was trying to convince Bahamians that they were on the island to actually save it from the locals. Dr. Livingston Marshall writes, "There are serious litter related problems (rodents for example) at Great Guana Cay that requires a comprehensive solution."

The Baker's Bay Club EIA includes pages and pages about how poorly the islanders run their island. Pictures are strewn all over the EIA showing examples of poor local design; not matching up to the stringent environmental standards of megadevelopments built post 1990's. Often, those photos are of other islands, but 'representing' the scenario at Guana Cay.

Kathleen Sullivan Sealey, also hired by the developer, also commented on the islanders in our earlier interviews: "... the real motive (of the islanders) is money and financial conflicts between different groups. The residents of Guana Cay have no real history of environmental activism and need to get their collective acts together...We have our work cut out for us in Environmental education and outreach."

In their advertisements and that the glossy photos that accompanied them, Discovery Land Company was attempting to discredit all of the local islanders concerns about the environmental impacts of their development by painting the local residents as culturally disappointing animals.

But meanwhile, the islanders were talking to the world's top ecologists and conservationists, all of whom were horrified...not at the locals, but at Discovery Land Company's audacious plan.

By the time Discovery Land Company agreed before the Supreme Court to stop all damaging development on the island, I think they realized they had to change their tactic, stop maligning the locals and actually start taking them seriously.

If they can't degrade the locals anymore to make themselves look better, why don't they just degrade Disney instead? In the late 1980's, Contractors working for a Disney cruise ship project dredged a giant hole through the shallow Sea of Abaco so that their giant Big Red Boat could fit in, and drop off hundreds of passengers for a few hours. Today, that kind of development could never happen - the dredging project, which faced numerous problems, took 2 years and killed large sections of coral reef as the operation caused massive silting. The Disney folks also created a gigantic island of the dredged spoils.

Disney even left the ruins of their development when they abandoned the island. They even left their invasive species there, so the whole place looked like a dump until nature crept around the dilapidated ruins and enveloped it.

Disney was an easy target, and Discovery Land Company could use the target to their advantage.

In recent months, the tactic has shifted towards painting Disney as the bad guy, and Discovery Land Company as the heroes liberating the northeastern island from the drudgery and despair of dilapidation.