Earthwatch and the cultural genocide of Guana Cay

Great Guana Cay is a thin, six mile island in the Northern Bahamas.

The island's inhabitants, who settled here 200 years ago, are employed in fishing and cottage industry tourism.

The island's coral reef is of international importance as one of the most intact surviving elkhorn/staghorn coral communities in the world.

The inhabitants began fighting tooth and nail to save their island's coral reef and mangroves from destruction after hearing of plans for a golf megadevelopment on their tiny barrier reef island.

Hundreds of the world's most revered coral reef scientists and marine ecologists, as well as almost every single Bahamian environmental organization, have banded together to try to stop the Baker's Bay Golf & Ocean Club (Discovery Land Company) from realizing completion.

The proposed 585 unit, 180 slip marina, tennis courts, hotel, destination spa and championship golf course were pushed through the Bahamian central government with no local consent and without proper permits in a land grab (including of local public land designated for use by Bahamians) of unbelievable proportion. In one of the most amazing and unique environmental stories in history, the islanders have brought the developer, and the Bahamian government, to task. The small island is now waging a bitter legal battle with the government and the developers.

Rise Up Sweet Island compiles the viewpoints of the Bahamian and international marine conservation community and presents documents, evidence and history for all interested parties.

Notes from the Road is a travelogue which covers environmental and cultural issues around North America, the Caribbean and Europe.

National Geographic Magazine supports anti-Megadevelopment movements in Abaco and Bimini in new article on shark conservation.

ReEarth
SharkLab
Restrict Bimini Bay
Mangrove Action Project
Global Coral Reef Alliance
Caribbean Conservation Corps
Notes from the Sea

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75% of Bahamians on Great Guana Cay signed a petition this winter against Baker's Bay Club. Three years later, resistance is strong.

<a href="https://erikgauger.wufoo.com/forms/rise-up-sweet-island-comments/" title="Rise Up Sweet Island Comments">Fill out my Wufoo form!</a>

Update, June 2, 2008: Earthwatch has announced they are no longer involved in the Baker's Bay Club on Great Guana Cay. The following was written between 2005-2006, when Earthwatch's involvement in the Baker's Bay Club project was being used in the media to give Baker's Bay legitimacy. Earthwatch appears to be making strides on this issue.

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I wouldn't imagine that the director of public affairs for Earthwatch is often questioned for being involved in anything controversial. Earthwatch, after all, is like Santa's little helper. Earthwatch, they're the good guys. But scientists and eco-bloggers around the world have been talking about Earthwatch lately, and they are saying that Earthwatch is inadvertently assisting in a cultural genocide of the inhabitants of Guana Cay.

Earthwatch supports about 140 missions in 48 different countries. Let's say you're a college student, it's summer, you want a vacation, but you also want to do good. You pay about $1800 to EarthWatch, and they send you off somewhere to help with environmental grunt-work. Maybe you go to Gabon, in Africa, and you watch after the monkeys. Maybe you go to Montana, and collect moose-droppings. Whatever you are doing, you are helping ecologists with important research that is supposed to be helping planet Earth.

Earthwatch is always the good guy. But today, Earthwatch sends kids to help Kathleen Sullivan Sealey conduct studies that the Discovery Land Company uses to sell its controversial golf course.

To Mary Blue Magruder, the director of public affairs for Earthwatch, Sullivan Sealey is a kind-hearted conservationist who 'cares deeply about the environment.' Magruder seems oblivious about the ultimate use of Sullivan Sealey's research and the weight of the international outrage stemming from the project that Earthwatch sends children to (see videos of Earthwatch volunteerrs at Guana Cay here and here)

I do not like golf courses, and we do not in any way support this development.

- Mary Blue Magruder, Earthwatch

I explain to Magruder that I have a deep respect for Sullivan Sealey's work in the Bahamas, but I also remind her that 'Kathleen is paid by the Discovery Land Company' and the end objective of her work; the reason she is employed by Discovery Land Company helps to greenlight the construction of a golf course, a large marina, a seaplane landing zone and 450 mansions in a crucially important ecological zone.

Magruder initially wrote me in what appeared to be words of horror. Sullivan Sealey, after all, was Earthwatch's 2003 Scientist of the Year. Magruder wrote back, " Ouch. This is news to me, I'm sorry to say.”

She later told me on the phone, “I do not like golf courses, and we do not in any way support this development.” Later, her voice appeared to indicate defensiveness, and she said, "You and I are on the same side, we are fighting for the same things here, so I am not sure what you want.”

I told her that I don't want anything, I am just a travel writer, and I do not represent any cause other than my own writing. I told her that it is the residents of Guana Cay that want Earthwatch off their island. While they hope Earthwatch continues to offer volunteers for Kathleen's research in the Exuma's (a group of islands south of the Abacos), they hope they no longer help the greenlighting of a harmful golf course that is predicted to destroy their coral reef within 10 years.

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