Et Newletter June 2009

Environment TO BAGO new slett er

BELLE GARDEN ASSESSMENT UPDATE Environment TOBAGO

E nvironment TO-BAGO (ET) is a non-

government, non-profit, vol-unteer organisation , not subsidized by any one group, corporation or government body.

Founded in 1995, ET is a proactive, advocacy group that campaigns against nega-tive environmental activities throughout Tobago. We achieve this through a variety of community an environ-mental outreach programmes.

Environment TOBAGO is funded mainly through grants and membership fees. These funds go back into implement-ing our projects. We are grateful to all our sponsors over the years and thank them for their continued support

W hat’s inside

Belle Garden Assess-ment Update

1

Annual Career Day 3 OAS 5th Summit of the Americas—Pre-summit meeting

4

Destruction near Kilgwyn Wetland

5

What is a Fuel Cell? 6

Book Review 8

What’s Happening @ 9 Notes to contributors

10

June 2009 Volume 3 Issue 2

At the beginning of November 2008 Mrs. Patricia Turpin, President of Environ-ment Tobago, officially launched the project at a function that included the participants, representatives of Environment Tobago, the management team and Mrs. and Mr. Mc Kenna, the former Secretary of Agriculture, Marine Affairs and the Environment and

the local press. Since that day eight community members are par-ticipating in weekly training sessions that provide them with the necessary background information on the importance of wetlands, their ecology and biodi-versity and with all necessary skills to provide eco tours to local and international tourists. The training was supposed to be much more than the regular tour guiding training, therefore the course outline was established and administered in collaboration with Mr. Sylvester Clauzel, CEO of the Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute (here

lecturing at the centre), and Aljoscha Wothke, lecturer at the Trinidad and Tobago Hospitality and Tourism Institute for Environmental Issues, Mr. David Rooks, a re-nowned naturalist and Mr. Kevin Trotman as assistant lecturer.

This constellation brought together unprecedented expertise of senior lectur-ers and our course evaluation shows that the trainees were very satisfied with the quality of presentations ranking them on average with 9 out of 10 points. Each Sunday was dedicated to a different topic covering the following issues: • Introduction to wetlands, their importance, our relationship to wetlands in To-

bago • Basics of tour guiding, dress code, general behavior • Wetland flora, general wetland ecology. • Trends in Tourism – past and present • Introduction to the tourism industry and its structure • Eco Tourguiding: what makes it different • Value adding using wetland based products • Historical & cultural background of the community and folk tales, beach ecology • Wetland flora, medicinal herbs / cultural usage • The blue crab in its natural environment • Tobago’s wetland birds, wetland specific reptiles and mammals • Conceptualizing a product: from concept to context

Official launch of the project

June 2009 Editor: Jo-Anne Nina Sewlal Assistant Editor: Christopher Starr Design & Layout: Jo-Anne Nina Sewlal Technical Support: Nolan Craigwell, Jerome Ramsoondar Nigel Austin Enid Nobbee Contributors: Jo-Anne Nina Sewlal Christopher Starr Environment TOBAGO Photographs: Environment TOBAGO

Board of Directors 2008-2009

President:: Patricia Turpin Vice-President: Kamau Akili Secretary: Kay Seetal Treasurer: Shirley Mc Kenna Committee members: Wendy Austin William Trim Fitzherbert Phillips Geoffrey Lewis Bertrand Bhikkary Heather Pepe Ryan Allard David Antoine Andy Roberts

Page 2 Environment TOBAGO newsletter

• Designing a product concept • Tour packaging: Itinerary development • Costing & Pricing a tour • Standards in tours operations • Planning a tour using skills and tools learnt • Introduction to the flora and fauna of Tobago • Butterflies and other spectacular wetland invertebrates • Turtle watching

• Tour Guide responsibilities and caring for the visitor The year 2009 started with further training activi-ties: Prof. Jacob Opadei, Head of the Department of Surveying and Land Information, UWI, and his team were engaged to introduce the trainees to the application of GIS for wetland management and practical training in GPS data gathering. The manage-

ment team and Ms. Hema Singh, Project Officer, Environment Tobago were then trained to analyse the GPS data and create Arc View maps of the

wetland. The offer of Maurice Wylie, a UWI student, to conduct his Master’s thesis on the surveying of the Belle Garden Wetland was very welcome by the entire team and will provide further valuable information for the management of the area.

Environment Tobago also was able to es-tablish collaboration with two students from the University of Leeuwarden, Netherlands, to assist with biodiversity assessments and the develop-ment of a co – management plan for the Belle Garden Wetland. Most of the flora and fauna pho-tographs in this report were taken by one of the students, Mrs. Tina Eastman de Jonge

February 2009 started with World Wet-land Day, and Environment Tobago held its annual programme at the Belle Garden Wetland and Community Centre. This included speeches from several organisations, one was given by a member of the student body of the Belle Garden Wetland Conservation Project who informed the audience of how the project has benefited him and the community thus far.

Other activities on this occasion were a two - morning beach cleanup, involv-ing trainees and community members; approximately one ton of garbage was col-lected and all participants agreed that clean ups would have to be a continuous effort in combination with awareness programmes at schools due to the fact that the pollu-tion was observed to be coming both from the sea and from area up river from the wetland. One afternoon was dedicated to tree planting at the wetland involving train-ees and students from the schools in the area, such plant species were selected that would attract butterflies and hummingbirds and as well provide food for other wild-life. On the second day our newly trained Eco Tourguides volunteered to give

The results of our cleanup!

Maurice Wylie explaining the use of a handheld GPS unit to a trainee

MISSION STATEMENT

E nvironment

TOBAGO

conserves Tobago’s

natural and living

resources and advances

the knowledge and

understanding of such

resources, their wise

and sustainable use and

their essential

relationship to human

health and the quality of

life

Page 3 Volume 3 Issue 2

free tours to local and international tourist. T his proved to be quite an encouragement to them as they got to see in action all that they have been learning and enjoyed the praise given to them by the tourists for an excellent tour. Comments such as, “I’m over 100% after this tour”, was given by one of the guests of the touring party. On the last day of the World Wetland activities, Mr. Brian Bain, elected rep-resentative of the Belle Garden Eco Tourguides made an announcement which should be valued as an important milestone toward the success of the project and the imple-mentation of a future co-management plan. On his own account he held a meeting with the hunters of the area achieving an agreement to stop hunting at the Belle Gar-den Wetland for a period of five years in order to allow the animal population to re-generate, after the five year period all hunting activities would be carried out in a sus-tainable way. Environment Tobago, which will conduct school wetland awareness pro-grammes starting in March 2009, has already agreed to hire our Belle Garden Eco Tourguides for a two months period, providing the trainees with their first tour guid-ing related income after months of training. Water testing was conducted at three sites along the Belle Garden River; de-spite the high pollution with garbage, the chemical parameters for phosphates and nitrates are well within limits, also the absence of chlorine is a good sign, the high pH at the site close to the school needs some further investigation. A second water test-ing is planned for March and will include bacteriological tests.

Currently, at the end of February 2009, the project management team is de-veloping Belle Garden Eco Tourguiding advertising plaques, which will be, with the kind assistance of the Tobago Hotel and Tourism Association, distributed at hotels and other high frequency locations throughout Tobago. March will start with the development of our Belle Garden Eco Tour website and the erection of awareness signs at the entrance of and within the wetland. From the 3rd of March 2009, Ms. Hollie Manuel, a GIS resource post graduate envi-ronmentalist with experience in Kenya and Australia, will dedicate five further days to refresh and upgrade the management team’s knowledge on GIS usage and assist with the creation of the wetland maps. This pilot project shall serve as a role model for the mapping and monitoring of the remaining Tobago wetlands and as well as used to identify strengths and miti-gate weaknesses of the pilot project.

20.02.2009 pH

Tot. Phos-phates [mg/l]

Nitrates [mg/l]

Tot. Chlo-rine [mg/l] TDS[mg/l]

Drain Near School 10.4 1.6 nil nil 2050

Mid River 8.2 nil 2 nil 17860

River mouth 8.01 nil 1 nil 3340

20.02.2009 pH

Tot. Phos-phates [mg/l]

Nitrates [mg/l]

Tot. Chlo-rine [mg/l] TDS[mg/l]

Drain Near School 10.4 1.6 nil nil 2050

Mid River 8.2 nil 2 nil 17860

River mouth 8.01 nil 1 nil 3340

“ To many people these tall peaks make for a challenging but scenic hike. But they are not just another tall mountain to clim b. ”

Page 4 Environment TOBAGO newsletter

Environment Tobago and Signal Hill Secondary Comprehensive School Annual Career Day - April 24th 2009

In an effort to assist students to explore options before they hit the working world, the principal and staff of the Signal Hill Secondary Comprehensive School hosted their Annual Career Day on April 24th at the school’s compound. Environment Tobago was invited to set up a small booth and interact with the students. ET was very happy to attend this affair as we hoped not only to impart valuable knowledge about Environment Tobago but also to invite some of the students to visit our Education Centre, become volunteers and encourage them to care for their envi-ronment. The students learned about non-government organizations, how they are struc-tured, their unique place in society, the roles that they play and gaps which they fill. They also learned about possible job opportunities in this field and was given a Case Study to serve as an example of the type of functions which one would likely be ex-pected to do in an NGO such as ET. It was encouraging for us to see the general interest in the environment espe-cially the formation of a small environmental club. ET will continue to work with the group and provide assistance where necessary.

OAS- 5th Summit of the Americas Civil Society- NGO’s and CBO’s Preparatory Meeting for

The Summit of the Americas to be held in April, 2009 October 30th & 31st,Crown Plaza, Trinidad.

The Theme of the pre-summit meeting was “Sustainable Development, Gender affairs, Energy and the Environment”. Civil Society delegates from, North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean- NGO’s and CBO’s, representing all of the areas mentioned above, and hosted by the OAS came together to discuss the charter of Port-of-Spain to be presented in April to the heads of governments who would be gathering in Trinidad for the 5th Summit of the Americas. During the two-day meeting, each section of the charter was discussed thor-oughly. Stakeholders/ representatives of the various sectors made changes, additions and corrections to the document. The Sustainable Development and Environment sec-tor was represented by Environment Tobago, Caribbean Forest Conservation Associa-tion, CANARI and EPAS Consultants/Eden Shand. Changes and additions: • Introduction of the Earth Charter as a civil society voice in the document. • A call for the Monitoring and Implementation of multilateral environmental agree-ments that have been signed onto by our governments, e.g. Climate change and Ramsar Treaties. • A call for coordination between the various country ministries that overlap in devel-opment and the Environment. • A call for the development of alternative renewable energies. • A call for a determined effort at solid waste disposal- recycling. Recognising that health and sanitation issues are closely linked to solid waste disposal. The issues of gender affairs, poverty reduction and crime were also discussed and various measures added to the document. The final Document to be submitted to the heads of government has been completed.

“ the presence of FP may be an indication, an "early

warning system", that our seas are polluted and that

environmental changes are affecting the ability of wild

animals to resist infectious diseases”

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Destruction of Area Bordering the Kilgwyn Wetland, Tobago Environment TOBAGO

The following pictures were taken on the 19th of April 2009. The activities started on the morning of the 18th of April 2009 over the summit weekend. Mrs. Neila Bobb Prescot (Director of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, THA) and the Environmental Authority, Trinidad were contacted to no avail.

Pic 1. Escavator hired by Warner construc-tions clearing 7 acres directly adjacent to the Kilgwyn Wetland

Pic 2. Cleared area adjacent ( within 15 m) to wetland

Pic. 4. Cleared area at the entrance of Kilgwyn Wetland. Site is beign cleared for the develop-ment of 30 residential homes

Pic. 5. Boundary post (stick with red ribbon) at the boundary of Kilgwyn Wetland but clearly within the mangrove ecosystem

Page 6 Environment TOBAGO newsletter

ON DESOLATION ROW

Review of: George Gaylord Simpson 1934. Attending Marvels: A Patagonian Journal.

New York: Macmillan 295 pp. [Fifteenth in a series on "naturalist-in" books.]

Christopher K. Starr

Dept of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies [email protected]

"But the real characters of this country are immutable: wind, cold, drought, pebbles where soil should be and thorn bushes for grass. These cannot change within a mille-nium, and as long as they remain, Patagonia will be its savage self and its people will be set apart from all others." George Gaylord Simpson (1902-1984) worked at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and later at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He was perhaps the most prominent paleontologist of his time and one of the architects of the

What is a Fuel Cell? Jo-Anne Nina Sewlal

Dept of Life Sciences, University of the West Indies

A fuel cell operates on the same principal as a battery but they will not run down or need recharging once there is a supply of fuel. They are favoured in this age of environmental awareness because it generates electricity but emits water as a waste product. Many renewable energy technologies were discovered millennia or centuries ago and fuel cells are no exception being discovered in 1838 by Christian Friedrich Schönbein.

The basic physical structure of a fuel cell consists of an electrolyte between two electrodes, an anode which caries a negative charge and a cathode which has a positive charge. The hydrogen atoms enter the anode and are split into protons and electrons which have a positive and negative charge respectively. Both particles pass thorough the catalyst where the protons combine with the oxygen to produce water as exhaust while the electrons create an electric current. There are many different types of fuel cells where the difference is in the type of electrolyte used.

Fuel cells can be used for a variety of purposes, such as a power source for vehicles, laptops and other electronic devices. It can also be used as an auxiliary power source for residential and commercial building or in rural communities as an off-grid power source.

Unfortunately in Trinidad and Tobago this technology like solar energy is mostly utilized to power water heaters, but has recently been installed as an alterna-tive power source by our telecommunications service for their cellular site in Trini-dad. However, our use of this power source is not being exploited to its full potential.

Modern Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, the scientific movement that gave rise to evo-lutionary biology as we know it today. His main research was in the early part Cenozoic Era, which began about 65 million years ago and continues today. During most of this time, North America, Eurasia and Africa were connected, off and on, while South Amer-ica remained isolated. Simpson's treatment of the separate evolution of the south-american mammal fauna, before the closing of the Panama land-bridge three million years ago (Simpson 1980), is recommended for the non-specialist, as is his autobiography (Simpson 1978). Earlier in this series, we have treated the Gran Chaco and the Pampa of South America. Now we go further south to Patagonia, a wild, inhospitable, sparsely-populated region extending from approximately 42ES to 52ES. Unlike some other cold, demanding regions, such as the Tibet or the central Andes, Patagonia was never the seat of a highly-developed civilization. Accordingly, tourism is almost entirely ecotourism. In northern Patagonia, I found a well-organized, government-regulated ecotourism sector that prom-ises good conservation of the environmental base. Cold, dry, almost treeless regions like Mongolia and Patagonia are excellent places to look for macro-fossils. The mineralized bones of long-dead land vertebrates can re-main undisturbed and relatively exposed for eons. Charles Darwin spent about two years of his five-year voyage around the world in Argentina (Darwin 1989), including sub-stantial travels in Patagonia, where he made some notable fossil discoveries. Simpson first arrived in Argentina in 1930, just in time for coup d'état that over-threw Hipólito Yrigoyen, then returned in 1933 and 1935, for a total stay of more than a year. This is the naturalist-in account of that time and place. He worked the area around the small town (now a city) of Comodoro Rivadavia in Chubut province. (Let me men-tion in passing that an inordinate number of places in Argentina seem to be named after military figures, which cannot be socially healthy. One can understand that every town has a square and street named for José de San Martín, but it is unsettling forever to be bumping into the ghosts of Manuel Belgrano, Guillermo Brown, Julio A. Roca, Cornelio Saavedra and other slayers of many. But I digress.) There is much here about the hard work and uncertainty of paleontological field work. Like any prospecting, the hunt for vertebrate fossils has a very large element of chance. One makes great effort to choose a likely site, and then one can work a cliff face for days or even weeks, finding nothing of significance, until suddenly one day something fantastic appears. The work in Patagonia led to a fabulous haul of new fossils, but it re-quired a great deal of perseverance, intelligence and good luck. Inhospitable as it is, Patagonia is by no means lifeless, and Simpson has a keen eye for living creatures. He mentions many of the characteristic mammals and birds, with more extensive accounts of the guanaco (Lama guanicoe, one of four New World camels), pichi (Zaedyus pichiy, a small armadillo), patagonian tinamou (Tinamotis ingoufi) and Darwin's rhea (Rhea pennata, one of two New World ostriches). All in all, Simpson's attitude toward Patagonia is wonderfully ambivalent. Before go-ing to sleep, we find him thinking "Life here is not a pleasure in the ordinary sense of the word -- but it has its compensations -- yes, on the whole I am happy to be here -- I do like it in spite of everything." In spite of everything. We are left in no doubt as to the nature of "everything". It is not the cold, the almost constant hard winds or the daily hard labour. It is the people, whom Simpson sees as living under some sort of curse. Like any frontier area, Patagonia at that time was a refuge for failures and misfits. People arrived there with dreams of striking it rich and, when disillusioned, the vigorous ones quickly went back home and the rest remained. Predictably, the latter formed a society that was dysfunctional in large part, "the sort of place in which you are always looking over your sholder to see whether the crime has occurred yet." In the guest book of a country "hotel" he charitably wrote that "This is the most cheerless, God-forsaken, barn-like, clammy dump it has ever been

Page 7

“Cold, dry, almost treeless regions like Mongolia and Pata-gonia are excellent places to look for macro-fossils. The mineralized bones of long-dead land vertebrates can re-main undisturbed and relatively ex-posed for eons. “

Volunteers needed! Persons who are interested in helping with cataloguing and filing of ET’s educational, research and operational material

and archiving.

my misfortune to find myself in." That's kicking them when they're down. In these pages we meet many disreputable and unlikeable local characters, both those who considered themselves natives and the expatriates trying every measure to keep their children from going native. Both groups are mostly treated with humour. The only time Simpson shows real venom is in treating the community of immigants from South Africa. He regards the Afrikaners as degraded and miserable, losing their humanity generation by generation. Patagonia was (and is) not a region of high culture. Many of the locals were certain that Simpson and his assistant were prospecting for gold or something else of tangible value. It was surely a preposterous lie that they had come from another continent just to hunt for old bones out in the wilds. Besides, even if they really were after fossils, why would two educated men go to all that labour and roughing it, rather than just sit back in distant Buenos Aires and let their flunkies do the hard stuff? To those still clinging des-perately to shreds of gentility, the Americans were a shocking enigma. To end my account of this most engaging book, here is a long quotation to illustrate the sort of grand insight that Simpson derived from many months of digging in Patagonia: "There are three sorts of changes in their animal life that distinguish these succes-sive deposits and permit their recognition. Some of the animals in the older beds lived on, but the time is so great that they evolved into new species, and the descendants in the younger strata are unlike their ancestors in the older. Some of the ancient animals became extinct and left no descendants. And some of the younger animals have no an-cestors buried in the older beds, but were immigrants whose ancestors had lived in some other part of South America. In these three ways, life was constantly changing, as it is still today." References Darwin, C. 1989. Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.M.S. Beagle. London: Penguin 432 pp. Available in numerous other editions, some titled The Voyage of the Beagle. Simpson, G.G. 1978. Concessions to the Improbable. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 304 pp.

Page 8 Environment TOBAGO newsletter

ET is now on Facebook and Twitter

We invite everyone on Facebook to join. Here we will post upcoming events, links, photos and videos on ET matters and other environmental issues. ET group link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=53362888661&ref=ts And keep up to date on what we are up to by following us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/environ_tobago

WHAT’S HAPPENING @ ET

“We are left in no doubt as to the na-ture of "everything". It is not the cold, the almost constant hard winds or the daily hard labour. It is the people, whom Simp-son sees as living under some sort of curse. “

Environment TOBAGO Environmental

and Services Map of Tobago

They are excellent and will be published every two years. Published in January 2008. Requests for these maps can be

made to ET office.

Environment TOBAGO t-shirts and caps now available!!!

WHAT’S HAPPENING @ ET

Type: Lady’s tees Size: Small & Medium Price: TT$100.00 Colours: Lime green, red and black Description: ET logo printed on front and sponsor logo at the back centre

Type: Regular tees Size: Small, Medium & Large Price: TT$100.00 Colours: Kelly green, red, black, navy blue, ash, purple, royal blue and black forest Description: ET logo printed on front and sponsor logos on sleeves at the back centre

Type: Polos Size: Small, Medium & Large Price: TT$150.00 Colours: Kelly green, royal blue, red, gold and ash grey Description: ET logo embroidered on left breast, spon-sor’s logo printed on the back.

Orders can be made through the office.

Page 9 Volume 3 Issue 2

Price: TT$120.00

New Members

With a membership of 394 worldwide, Owen Washington ET welcomes the following members: Chauvain Joseph Danae Laptiste

GUIDELINES TO CONTRIBUTORS Articles on the natural history and environment are welcome especially those on

Trinidad and Tobago. Articles should not exceed approximately 1200 words (2 pages) and the editors reserve the right to edit the length. Images should be submitted as separate files. Submit material to any of the following: 1) [email protected] 2) [email protected] Deadline for submission of material for the 3rd Quarter 2009 issue of the Bulletin is September 10th, 2009.

EMAIL ________________________________________________

Office: 11 Cuyle Street Scarborough, Tobago, W.I.

Mailing address: P.O. Box

503, Scarborough, Tobago, W.I.

Phone: 1-868-660-7462 Fax: 1-868-660-7467

E-mail: [email protected]

Page 10 Environment TOBAGO newsletter

We are on the web http://www.Environmenttobago.net

READERS’ FORUM

Dear ET Newsletter Readers, We want to hear from YOU! Comments may be edited for length and clarity. Send your comments to: [email protected] or [email protected]