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This letter might well be considered an epitaph for both Bimini and Guana Cay -those Islands in the Stream both now wracked with mangrove clearing and coastal degradation under two different developers' heavy machinery and heavy-handed politics. The Battle To Save Bimini and Guana Cay Is Not Over! The lessons learned there are hard ones to accept-that outright corruption at the highest government levels and the avarice of single-minded, controlling developers can do so much irreparable damage to once vibrant and important ecosystems.
We can not sit idly by watching as the world loses yet another beautiful place, and a little more mystery has been thrown to the whims of unsustainable development. These are crimes to which we all must plead guilty if we are not now working our hardest to halt such travesties.
Let us look to a future where such shortsighted, mean-spirited decision makers and planners are never again allowed to be in such positions of power, where they can never again ruin the future for the generations to come. Our offspring will ask us, and we must answer them truthfully, How could we let Bimini Island and Guana Cay go? A golf course, or a living futureŠa marina or a mangrove forest wetland-- please tell me, who chose the golf course and marina?
For the Mangroves and the Mangrove Communities,
Alfredo Quarto,
Mangrove Action Project
PO Box 1854
Port Angeles, WA 98362-0279, USA
(360) 452-5866
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