The Orchid Hothouse of Death | July 22, 2006

Discovery Land Company, the developer of the Bakers Bay Club has been advertising its greenhouse. The greenhouse is being used to 'save' orchids and other plants from when the developer bulldozes one of the most important ecological zones in the Bahamas.

The Bahamian press, which is uneducated on environmental matters, equated the saving of orchids to a green developer. Bakers Bay Club is bulldozing acres of a unique terrestrial ecosystem, one that the EIA for the development admits is a vanishing ecosystem.

Orchids beware. Bahamian press are wooed by the Bakers bay Club greenhouse, which is a red herring for genuine ecological issues regarding the development. photo courtesy SGCR.

The botanical collections at Bakers Bay Club clearly sidesteps the primary environmental issues, and appears to be used as a red herring to divert genuine concerns about the coral reef and mangroves of the island.  Bakers Bay Club has collected some orchids and preserved them in a greenhouse, wooing many in the media into thinking they are careful land stewards. 

That a few orchids were spared the bulldozer scarcely compensates for the inevitable alteration of Great Guana Cay’s ecosystem during the massive terraforming and dredging that would accompany the construction of their golf course, marina, residential units and service facilities.  The orchids, incidentally, are not endemic to Great Guana Cay, although the public relations campaigns at Bakers Bay Club make it appear they are.  

According to Keith Bradley, a former botanist at the Bakers Bay Club, the orchid’s Bakers Bay Club are ‘saving’ are actually quite common in the Bahamas.

Bradley writes, "There are a number of common species and these are the ones on Guana. These are Encyclia boothiana, Encyclia rufa, Cattleyopsis lindenii, and Oncidium floridanum. There is also a common species that may or may not be native, Oeceoclades maculata. There is one species which I have indicated as rare and needing special protection, Tolumnia (Oncidium) sasseri. It is known otherwise only from Abaco and Andros. In truth though, taxonomists who have studied this genus carefully don't think it is a good species, instead being the more common Tolumnia (Oncidium) bahamensis. I would tend to agree."

To date, Discovery Land Company has addressed none of the legitimate environmental concerns. The apparently updated EIA and EMP are still unavailable to the public. While Discovery Land Company has a website for transparency purposes regarding the environment issues at Great Guana Cay, that website has not been updated since November 2005.

Honorable Hubert Ingraham responds to Notes from the Road | July 21, 2006

Recently, former (note: now current) Prime Minister of the Bahamas and Abaco native Hubert Ingraham wrote to Notes from the Road to discuss our stance on Great Guana Cay .

Ingraham has often taken positions opposite of the Bahamian public, and history has treated him well for taking powerful stands on matters that would have been considered radical in its time.

Former Prime Minister and current front prime minister front runner honorable hubert Ingraham listens to troy Albury, president of save guana Cay reef. Photo courtesy sgcr.

In his letter to Notes from the Road, Ingraham denounced the current administration for its handling of the Great Guana Cay issue. He writes:

"...the people most impacted by the development, the residents of Great Guana Cay, were not properly kept in the picture as the Government moved to sell or long lease much if not all of the remaining public lands on the cay to the private developers of the Baker’s Bay Resort.  This was wrong and unacceptable.

As legitimate concerns were raised by residents concerning possible adverse impacts on their livelihoods as fishermen and tour dive operators should the proposed development damage the off-shore coral reef, the government became secretive; it withheld from the public information contained in the Environmental Impact Assessment conducted on the proposed development.  This caused many people to expect the worst from the development.

The veil of secrecy continued as residents of Great Guana Cay sought to learn how their traditional access to beaches and to traditional crabbing areas falling within the proposed development zone would be preserved.  Again mistrust was fostered."

The FNM must have a stronger public stance on Bakers Bay Club. The FNM has an honorable history on changing the way the Bahamas acts towards the environment. Backing the locals of Great Guana Cay will enforce this legacy.

The letter from the Honorable Ingraham included much more detail, although we will release that detail at a later date.

Beach Harassment Continues on Northern End of Guana Cay | July 12, 2006

According to locals on Great Guana Cay, a local family went to the northeastern end of Great Guana Cay to light a fire and play music, a custom for local families celebrating the Bahamian independence day. Employees of Bakers Bay Club reportedly rushed to the beach and told them they could not light a fire or have music on the beach. The BBC dispatched six security guards to stand over them at the high water mark and watch over them. When the family started to light a small fire to cook hotdogs and hamburgers, General Manager Carter Redd reportedly threatened to call the police. An article on the subject: Locals harassed at beach

Although Beaches are public in the Bahamas below high tide line, harassment of locals who have long used these beaches is common. Photo courtesy SGCR.

 There are no laws preventing Bahamians from lighting fires or playing music below the high water mark, and the police were in agreement with the family. According to witnesses, Carter Redd was told to leave them alone so they could celebrate their holiday.

This instance is not isolated. Locals enjoying their traditional rights have been harassed by Bakers Bay Employees on many occasions. Some instances have made it to the local press and have even been admitted by BBC officials in the press. It is truly ironic that on independence day, a foreign entity is reminding Bahamians that their rights and independence are truly being lost.

Jean-Michel Cousteau comes to the assistance of the Great Guana Cay Residents
July 6, 2006

Jean-Michel Cousteau, who recently helped convince President Bush to protect 1200 miles of Hawaii's coral reefs in one of the boldest environmental moves of history, has just come to the aid of the Great Guana Cay native residents. Cousteau urges the island nation of the Bahamas to reconsider the Bakers Bay Golf and Ocean Club.

He writes, "...the Discovery Land Company Bakers Bay Golf and Ocean Club development may undermine the environmental health of the region; specifically affecting the nesting sea turtles of Gumelemi Cay and to the north, and impacting the neighboring reefs adjacent to the proposed golf course. Knowing from experience that ecological consequences of very large developments that do not have strict environmental safe guards can have far reaching consequences, I urge you to review the environmental impact of this development and consider the consequences for future generations of your citizens." Read more.

More Bad Press for the Bahamas
July 3, 2006

Press about the Bahamas is getting worse, as more international press weighs in on the problems created by a national government intent to sell off its country in spite of long term tourism goals and the environment.

"Natives and others acknowledge the massive growth is critical to the Bahamas' future, but some are concerned about what it will do to the environment. What's more, they think the government isn't properly policing foreign developers, allowing them to make millions while taking advantage of the nation and its people. "There is some concern that the country is being given away," said Pat Strachan, immediate past president of the Bahamas Real Estate Association." From South Florida Sun Sentinel


Bad Press for the Bahamas
June 22, 2006

The Travel Press is responding negatively to Bakers Bay Club. This photo depicts construction proceeding on crown land during the supreme court case. photo courtesy save guana cay reef.

The travel press, which is the catalyst for much of the tourism, or lack thereoff, in the Bahamas, is already responding negatively to Bakers Bay Club. It will only get worse. Here are some clips: The Lonely Planet’s one paragraph description of every country in the world says that while a lot of the Bahamas is ‘Americanized’, you can escape to the genuine out-islands, “to disappear into a mangrove forest, explore a coral reef and escape the high-rise hotels and package-tour hype.”

Writing about contemporary Bimini, the April 2006 issue of Caribbean Travel & Life laments the “completion of an out-of-scale resort that will turn the island into, of all things, a casino and golf destination.”

The professional golf association’s official publication even writes of Abaco’s unique qualities, “I've found the real Bahamas. Not the over-developed, over-hyped Paradise Island version, but the Bahamas the British Loyalists found when they fled here in the 18th century.”

In a recent newspaper article, the London Telegraph asks its readers to avoid Bakers Bay Club ‘like the plague’, because it is “threatening what is one of the most complete coastal and marine eco-systems in the Caribbean.”

The San Francisco Chronicle writes about Guana Cay, “The calm, turquoise waters off this sleepy island have long lured visitors seeking shelter from storms, but a San Francisco development company’s ambitious plan to build a gated community…”

Where is the EIA and EMP?
June 22, 2006

Discovery Land Company's environmental monitoring team has boasted the notion that they are transparent, meaning that they will share anything with the public. Ask them for a copy of the current EMP or EIA. You won't get it. They claim that this material should not be available to the public until after the court case has been settled. But isn't that backwards-logic, since the strength of their case should rest somewhat on the strength of their position, which can only be revealed through these documents? While Discovery Land Company withholds the EIA and EMP from the Bahamian public, they have felt free to continue to attack the position of the Guana Cay locals through their public relations agency, which has claimed that the islander's case has nothing to do with the environment. That notion, of course, is defamatory, since it is common knowledge that hundreds of conservation groups back the position of the Guana Cay locals, while no conservationist or marine scientist publicly supports the position of Discovery Land Company and the Bakers Bay Club.

Bakers Bay Club Hires Foreign Workers
June 22, 2006

Discovery Land Company has announced that about 17% of its Bakers Bay Club workforce now consists of foreign workers, most likely from Mexico and Central America. Discovery Land Company had formerly been beating the Bahamian jobs drum as a way of routing the more encompassing issues of community rights and the environment. They can no longer do this. Like many hasty foreign developers, Bakers Bay Club is giving up on Bahamian labor. Many developers believe that Bahamians are inefficient and lazy, but this is far from the truth. Bahamians are hard workers with diverse skill-sets. By hiring laborers from thousands of miles away, Bakers Bay Club again sticks its middle finger at Abaco.

The Mayor of Great Guana Cay
June 16, 2006

Glenn Laing is the sort of fellow to whom laughs come easily.  People, when imagining him, imagine his belting laughs, strung out over gentle conversation and the martini shaker.  On the small seven-mile islet of Great Guana Cay, Glenn is known for his alcoholic concoctions; his bartending prowess has won him many awards.  Forever it seems, Glenn has presided over the bar, shaking the martini shaker amid a handful of drinkers, and a dry sub-tropical woods, and an empty beach, and a beautiful bay called Bakers Bay.

Glenn, a resort manager, a bartender, a man of many hats, is also, in the island nation of the Bahamas, a national hero.  You wouldn’t necessarily at first imagine it.  Glenn is a soft-spoken middle-aged man.  Bahamians from the northern island of Abaco and its many tiny cays have starkly different accents loosely based on their race.  Caucasian loyalists, who settled in Great Guana Cay two-hundred years ago, have accents that resemble their ancestors: British colonists in the new world. 

the tiny administrative center for Great guana Cay. Photo courtesy Save Guana Cay Reef.

Abaconians of African descent, who became free men in the Bahamas, have entirely different dialects; and Glenn, as the only black Bahamian on Great Guana Cay, speaks in this gentle West Indian whirr.

Friends of Glenn refer to him in jest as ‘the ladies man’, but the Glenn people recognize is the one who loves Abaco, and wants to share its rich history with everyone he knows.  He is a genuine Abaconian; a representive of an island region in the Bahamas so different, so isolated, so unique from the rest of the country that only recently in history, the island chain fought and lost in an attempt to become its own nation.

Glenn also happens to be the District Councillor of Great Guana Cay in an administrative unit consisting of Great Guana Cay, Man-O-War Cay and Elbow Cay. 

In the Abacos, Glenn is known as “Mayor Glenn.”

Normally, a district councillor is the sort who helps speed along the permit process, who votes on regional island matters, fights for well-needed funds to patch pot-holes or to repair pilings on the mail boat dock.  The distant Central Government often ignores Abaco, which with its healthy tourism and timber economy, does more than its fair share in funding the faraway treasury. 

Campaign T-Shirt for Mayor Glenn Photo courtesy Save Guana Cay Reef.

Glenn probably never imagined he’d preside as Great Guana Cay’s elected representative during this time.  Glenn probably never imagined he would preside over Great Guana Cay when the seven mile island began to symbolize to all Bahamians the rights of local communities and Bahamians in general against a distant and arguably corrupt central government.

In 2004, the citizens of Great Guana Cay learned that the Central Government of the Bahamas had designed a questionable relationship with an American golf course developer called Discovery Land Company.  The Central Government would hand over key obligations of its responsibility on Great Guana Cay to Discovery Land Company such as sanitation and waste management, in exchange for granting Discovery Land Company unimaginable rights to build an unimaginable footprint of a golf course, gated community and marina, spanning 2/5ths of the island.  The island’s mangroves would be blasted by dynamite, torn to shreds.  The island would be cut into parts to build an unnatural marina for mega-yachts.  And a consensus among marine scientists would predict that Discovery Land Company’s Bakers Bay Golf and Ocean Club would destroy the nearshore marine environment of the island, which, the locals explained, was vital to their economy and culture.

The world’s top marine biologists and conservationists would join Glenn and the islanders of Great Guana Cay in fighting the quite possibly illegal relationship between the developer and the government, claiming that the development would destroy the island’s coral reef, and that local communities must be afforded a say in the destiny of their own community’s future.

But little could be done.  In the fall of 2005, things started looking bad for the island of Great Guana Cay. 

And then Glenn began feeling chest pains.  A few hours later, a stroke.  In his bed in the days before being flown to the United States, where he continues to this day in recovery, he was talking nonsense, mostly.  He was saying things like this, “I’ve got to save the Bahamas!  I have to get better, so I can save my island!”

Great Guana Cay had seen its first casualty.  Glenn, the island’s public face  was now on some bed thousands of miles away.  A temporary representative could theoretically be elected in his place, but he would have no vote, and no say.

President Bush designates Hawaiian Corals as national monument:
June 16, 2006

See attached PDF President Bush surprised U.S. conservationists by establishing a national monument for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands in place of the proposed national marine sanctuary. There is a saying amongst environmentalists that there is no such thing as a final victory in conservation, but the surprise action by President Bush comes pretty close. It may serve as an object lesson that there is something to be said for hanging long and tough despite the apparent odds, as may be the case for Guana Cay.

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