Biminites Fight Back

Published: May 18, 2006

Biminites fight back

Tourism can be a force for conservation or for environmental destruction. In the Bahamas, a place of awesome natural beauty and abundant marine life, it seems obvious that tourism depends on conservation. Sun-worshippers, sport fishermen and divers are all attracted to pristine waters with a wealth of aquatic life. Yet the government of the Bahamas is opting to support a tourist development that will destroy one of the country’s most productive marine ecosystems: the mangrove forests of the Bimini islands. Here’s an issue where international voices really count: The Bahamian government needs to know that international tourists will NOT patronize a resort that destroys precious mangrove forests and marine habitat. Even stronger: international tourists will not visit countries that permit their natural resources to be destroyed. Please circulate this alert widely. Send it to your travel agent. And write your letter to the Prime Minister today. Thanks very much.

“Bimini’s mangrove estuary serves as a fish nursery for thousands of square miles of sea bottom. It is a special place both biologically and historically, and it needs international help if it is to survive.” – Gail Woon, Executive Director, EARTHCARE, The Bahamas “Construction has begun on the first phase of a mega-resort (condos, casino, golf course) that, if allowed to proceed unchecked, will consume the mangroves, together with all of the animals and plants that live there. Bimini’s shark population -- which has been studied for 20 years --would be gone.” -- Dr. Ellen Pikitch, Executive Director, Pew Institute for Ocean Science

If we didn’t know it before, last year’s devastating tsunami in South and Southeast Asia taught us that mangrove forests provide the best protection for life and property when hurricanes and tidal waves strike. While Indonesia plans to spend nearly $44 million for mangrove restoration along its wave-swept shores, people in the hurricane-prone Bahamas are stunned by a recent government decision to permit a developer to destroy Bimini island’s protective mangrove ecosystem and replace it with a tourist resort. The Bimini Bay Resort & Casino complex has already destroyed large areas of Bimini’s pristine habitats on land and sea, and in the wonderful in-between mangrove forests. Declining populations of conch, lobster and shark have been reported. If the resort complex is allowed to proceed to Phases II and III, its marinas, condos and golf course would replace one of the most important marine nursery habitats: Bimini’s North Sound lagoon. The North Sound nursery supplies large areas of the Bahamas with fish, lobster and conch. It is also the site of a marine research station where scientists have been studying sharks for 20 years – a remarkable and rare opportunity to track individual sharks over time and learn about their life cycle and interaction with the mangrove ecosystem. Located just 50 miles east of Florida, Bimini’s mangrove lagoons and seagrass beds are among the most productive marine ecosystems. They provide nursery and feeding grounds for many coral reef fishes and commercially important fish, as well as nesting areas for Loggerhead Turtles and the endangered Hawksbill Turtle. Renowned for big game fishing and diving, Bimini is one of the world’s best places to see wild Bottlenose Dolphins and Atlantic Spotted Dolphins. Recognizing the importance of protecting this biologically and economically critical resource, the Bahamian government drew up plans for the Bimini Marine Protected Area, the first of five such areas proposed for the Bahamas. But before the conservation plan went into effect, Miami-based developer Gerardo Capo closed a deal to construct his mega-resort complex. The government’s inadequate environmental regulations do not prevent Mr. Capo from dredging and destroying the sea bottom, bulldozing the mangroves, carving up and filling in the land. Concerned citizens say there is no adequate plan for disposing of solid waste and sewage from the enormous complex. They also fear that fertilizer runoff from the proposed golf course will contaminate the remaining natural areas.

How can we help? Scientists, local fishermen and sport fishermen, tourism operators and the residents of Bimini believe that an international outcry can convince the Bahamian government to halt this destructive project at Phase I, and to implement the Bimini Marine Protected Area. Please write to the Prime Minister, and send a copy of your letter to the Tribune newspaper.
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Shark Research on Bimini Island, Bahamas Over 400 species of sharks roam the world’s oceans. As a top predator
species, sharks have ruled the seas for 400 million years. Their wide-ranging
migrations and often inaccessible habitats make them difficult animals to study. Thanks to the unique geography and ecology of Bimini island, the Lemon sharkis among the best studied of any shark species. The Bimini Biological Field Station is the world’s longest-running shark research station; most of the world’s shark biologists have trained there. Bimini’s shallow waters offer perfectconditions for sharks to mate, give birth and survive their critical first years, and for scientists to identify, tag, track and observe individual sharks over time. Sharks, says Dr. Ellen Pikitch, “are at the forefront of a wave of extinction that threatens our oceans.” Their fins are prized for shark fin soup, their skins for leather; Lemon sharks are sold for their meat. Their biology also makes them vulnerable: female Lemon sharks give birth to litters of only 2 to 18 live free-swimming “pups” after a gestation period of about a year. Only half the pups survive their first year. Using DNA technology, biologists have learned that female Lemons return repeatedly to Bimini to mate and to bear their young, whereas males rarely breed there more than once. Bimini-born sharks enjoy an abundant diet of fish, stingrays, crabs and shrimp. They stay in the lagoons for their first three or four years. At maturity (age 10 to 12), they begin to migrate over much wider areas.

If the Bimini Bay Resort and Casino project is completed, critical Lemon shark habitat will be destroyed and scientists will lose one of the world’s best places to study shark behavior and life cycles.
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  Requested Action: Please write a polite letter to the Prime Minister of the Bahamas. Local environmentalists request that you also send a copy of your letter to one of the country’s major newspapers, the Tribune. Bring this issue to the attention of your travel agency, too. Pressure from tourists and the tourism industry is essential to winning this campaign! A model letter is available at www.globalresponse.org

Tell the Prime Minister you are very alarmed to learn that instead of protecting the Bimini islands’ valuable mangrove ecosystem, the Bahamian government has authorized construction of the Bimini Bay Resort, which is already damaging mangrove and marine resources during Phase I of its construction.
Urge him to halt construction at Phase I and immediately implement the Bimini Marine Protected Area to protect the mangrove ecosystem which, in turn, protects the human population from major storms and provides protective habitat for a wealth of economically and ecologically valuable species.
Tell him that as a tourist you favor destinations where natural resources are protected, and you would never patronize a country or resort that destroys valuable mangrove ecosystems.

Addresses: The Rt. Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie, Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Cecil Wallace-Whitfield Centre, Cable Beach
P.O. Box N-3217
Nassau, N.P. Bahamas
EMAIL: pmchristie@bahamas.gov.bs

FAX: 242-327-5806

Editor
The Tribune
P.O. Box N-3207
Nassau, N.P., Bahamas
FAX: 242-328-2398

EMAIL: letters@tribunemedia.net <mailto:letters@tribunemedia.net%20>

Salutation: Honorable Prime Minister Christie,
Postage: from the US is 80 cents.
Impact Scale:
****personal letter sent by mail
***personal fax
**personal email
*form letter

This Global Response Action was issued at the request of and with information provided by EARTHCARE (earthcare@batelnet.bs) and the Pew Institute for Ocean Science (http://www.pewoceanscience.org/). For information about Bimini and shark research, see http://www.miami.edu/sharklab/. About the resort project, see http://www.biminibayresort.com/ About sharks, see http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/. About mangroves, see http://www.earthisland.org/map/ Special thanks to Tim Calver for his photo of a Bimini researcher and shark, Neil Hammerschlag for his photo of a Lemon shark, and Mangrove Action Project for their photo of mangroves.

We encourage you to write directly to the hotel operator:

Gregory Rockett
Vice President, Development
Hilton International - The Americas
901 Ponce de Leon Blvd. #700
Coral Gables, FL 33134
USA

Gregory.Rockett@hilton.com
Direct: +1 305 774 4502
Main: +1 305 444 3444
Fax: +1 305 774 3895
gregory.rockett@hilton.com

Executive Assistant:

Direct: +1 305 774 4524
nanette.torano@hilton.com

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MODEL LETTER

The Rt. Hon. Perry Gladstone Christie, Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Cecil Wallace-Whitfield Centre, Cable Beach
P.O. Box N-3217
Nassau, N.P. Bahamas
EMAIL: pmchristie@bahamas.gov.bs <mailto:pmchristie@bahamas.gov.bs%20>
FAX: 242-327-5806

Honorable Prime Minister Christie,

I am very concerned about your administration’s authorization for the construction of the Bimini Bay Resort and Casino and the environmental damage it will cause to irreplaceable mangrove and marine resources if it is allowed to continue at its proposed scale. Like many concerned citizens around the world, I have been following the extensive international print, electronic and television media attention focused on this issue (e.g. in the The Washington Post, The Guardian, Miami Herald, NBC 6) and I recently saw the March 2, 2006 issue of the Nassau Guardian, which carried an article “Bimini Bay to be Scaled Down”. In this article, I was delighted to see that the Bimini Bay Resort issue was the subject of parliamentary debate and that both the developer and members of your administration have acknowledged that the scale of the project is inappropriate because it would cause significant damage to “eco-sensitive land” that the developer has now pledged to “return to the government and to the people of Bimini and The Bahamas”.

In the coming months, your administration will make decisions about this project that will have long-term and far-reaching effects on the future of Bimini’s unique marine environment and tourism industry. With that in mind, I urge you to consider implementing the following measures to significantly scale-back this potentially devastating development:

1. Limit the Bimini Bay Resort and Casino to areas already cleared along the western edge of the North Sound and forgo further mangrove deforestation along this coast.

The Bimini Bay Resort’s own website acknowledges the ecological importance of mangroves and claims that they are concerned about restoring and creating mangrove habitat in Bimini. Unfortunately, mangrove ecosystems cannot be artificially “created” and any “restoration” that Bimini’s mangroves need is a direct result of the Bimini Bay Resort’s bulldozing activities. It has been well documented that Bimini Bay Resort has already removed a large area of mangroves, including an area with the largest species diversity of marine life in the North Sound.

2. Remove the proposed golf course from the development.

The golf course poses the single greatest threat of the proposed plan to Bimini’s marine environment. This is because it requires the removal of a huge area of “eco-sensitive land” (i.e. mangroves). Moreover, the pesticides and fertilizers used to maintain a golf course will inevitably enter Bimini lagoon and the nearby reefs, especially given the high winds and rainfall experienced in this area. The scientific literature is replete with examples of how these chemicals damage marine ecosystems (e.g. die-offs of invertebrates, bioaccumulation of toxins in the food chain, toxic algal blooms, algal overgrowth of coral reefs). Contaminated water from golf course run-off will be flushed into Bimini’s main lagoon by tides on a daily basis, potentially diminishing water quality throughout the system. While the developer may benefit from a golf course, the people of Bimini and The Bahamas would assume all of the risk and costs.

3. Establish a Marine Protected Area along the east coast of the North Sound and around East Bimini.

As the government acknowledged in 2000, the mangroves of North and East Bimini are of highest priority for national protection. A Marine Protected Area will ensure that this richly diverse ecosystem continues to serve Bimini as it always has: by providing nursery habitat for key food species (queen conch, lobster) and the gamefish that have made Bimini famous all around the world. The mangroves and seagrass flats are also vital habitat for the baitfish that attract large pelagic species (e.g. tuna, billfish) and the anglers that pursue them. The fish which populate Bimini’s coral reefs will also benefit from protected nursery areas, and thus, so will the thousands of SCUBA and snorkel enthusiasts that visit Bimini. It is likely that even the Bimini Bay Resort itself would profit more from a Marine Protected area than from a golf course.

As the world learned at great cost during last December’s tsunami in South and South East Asia, it is critical to protect the mangrove ecosystem which, in turn, protects the human population from major storms. The livelihoods of your people and the future of your tourism industry depend on conservation of the mangrove ecosystem. As a tourist, I select destinations where natural resources are protected, and I would never patronize a country or a resort that destroys valuable mangrove ecosystems.

Sincerely,

- Submitted by Global Response



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