Sorry tales from the swamp

SORRY TALES FROM THE SWAMP (1999) The North American and European tourists who recently came to Trinidad to sample the wonderful eco-tourism they’d heard so much about, or seen, perhaps, on the Miss Universe show, had an unpleasant shock in Caroni Swamp.

The ibis they’d come to see were blasted out of the trees by poachers before their eyes, lifeless bundles plopping into the mud, blood invisible on their scarlet feathers.

The birding enthusiasts on Winston Nanan’s boats were horrified. They told Nanan they’d make it clear to the Government this was no way to encourage tourism. Some said they’d never return to Trinidad and would discourage people from coming here at all. Others demanded to leave the swamp immediately.

But the public slaughter of the ‘protected’ ibis is merely the most visible of the many problems facing Caroni Swamp.

Caroni Swamp is in trouble says Nanan. If its present state is a measure of the importance we place on our natural resources and tourism spin-offs then we, too, are in trouble.

For the problems that beset Caroni Swamp are a reflection of what is happening throughout Trinidad and Tobago: an ecological and tourism time-bomb born of mismanagement, misguided priorities, over-stretched resources, pollution, poaching, and public ignorance and indifference.

Nobody knows or understands Caroni Swamp like ornithologist and environmentalist Winston Nanan. He’s been taking people to see its wonders since he was eleven when he helped his father with the family’s tour business.

The swamp he grew up in and the swamp he works in today are entirely different worlds. I asked him to show me why.

To the untrained eye Caroni Swamp looks just fine. Great expanses of open water sparkle in the sunshine; mangroves proliferate; herons, egrets, and ospreys patrol its channels; caiman lurk in the shadows; a new visitor centre, boardwalks, observation post, and a picnic area have sprung up.

But looks are deceptive.

The expanses of open sea water devoid of vegetation — except tiny mangroves starting life on mudbars — should be anything but bare. The sea water should be fresh water.

As a young man, Nanan’s beloved swamp was filled with fresh water. The open expanses and mudflats were covered with nymphia amazonum, water hyacinth, bunch grass, crab grass, needleweed and rupia. He’d gaze in awe at the birds which fed there: “It was a wonderful sight. You used to see hundreds of birds flocking together on these open areas when the mudflats were exposed,” said Nanan, pointing at the seawatery wasteland.

“The ibises were there, and the egrets and herons in large flocks, but walking on the lilly pads you’d have jacanas, purple and common gallinules, limpkins, rails, crakes, various species of bitterns, the rufescent tiger heron, and many other wading birds. We’ve lost all that.”

The saline content of the swamp had been largely held at bay by the North/South Embankment. This was constructed from organic matter which had been dredged. The embankment was honeycombed by crab burrows and it began collapsing. Eventually the seawater flooded in. The vegetation died, and the freshwater fish disappeared along with the birds.

“There was never an attempt to create a permanent embankment, though that could have been done,” said Nanan. “No attention was paid.”

One of the prime objective’s of Winston Nanan’s newly formed Caroni Wetlands Scientific Trust — Mr and Mrs Panday are its patrons — is the reintroduction of the North/South Embankment, a view endorsed by an Inter American Development Bank (I.D.B.) funded study of the swamp.

“An embankment would enhance this area immensely,” said Nanan. “It would cause the return of all the freshwater vegetation and the bird species which feed on those areas.”

Instead, the only new vegetation you’ll see in abundance are mangroves, and though it may seem odd to think of that being a problem in a mangrove swamp, it is.

With the transportation of mangrove seedlings throughout the swamp by the tide , the mangroves are taking root on exposed mudflats. Eventually, little mangroves become big ones and, at the present rate, large areas of open water, the feeding areas and attendant wildlife will disappear.

“If you give mangroves a chance they’ll become a forest,” said Nanan. “If we don’t leave open areas we’ll lose the swamp forever.”

At the boat yard end of the swamp where the tours embark, you can see a relentless tide of green advancing east over what were once grasslands supporting yet more species of wildlife. “This is happening in the interior itself, at a rapid pace and no one is dealing with it.”

Nanan is critical of the Forestry Division’s management and understanding of Caroni Swamp for a variety of reasons. One of these is the department’s repeated failure to deal with the mangrove problem Nanan said he’s raised for years.

Nanan’s remedy is simple: “Where the seedings have started to pop up, take a boat and pull them out one at a time. We’re dealing with little spits of land exposed at low tide which a boat can travel over at high tide. That is no burden to the forestry officer.”

David Chadee of the Forestry Division, in charge of Caroni Swamp, seemed unaware of this problem. He told me he was concentrating efforts on stopping people removing whole mangrove branches, ones which bear oysters.

Out where the Gulf meets the swamp, the opposite effect is happening. The mangroves are being eaten away by the sea.

In the last 12 to 15 years, said Nanan, there has been a continous collapse of mangrove along the entire shoreline, to a depth of 200ft to 300 ft. Global warming, rising tides and westerly winds are the cause. Gauges in the Caroni Swamp indicate an increase of six centimetres in the water level in 10 years.

Just to the north of the Caroni River mouth — which has extended itself 600ft out to sea in the last 20 years, the direct result of the degradation of the Northern Range and the build up of silt and filth carried to sea by the river — is WASA’s sewerage plant at Sea Lots.

Here, it was admitted by a WASA employee, as if we couldn’t smell it, supposedly treated sewerage is pumped into the Gulf as raw sewerage. It threatens fish and shellfish, those who catch them and those who eat them.

This effluent is impacting directly on Caroni Swamp, according to Nanan. He cites evidence of this in the algae (also in Caroni River), caused by lack of oxygen, carried by currents and tides to the swamp, areas of which have turned green; and in research showing the contamination of oysters, mussels, barnacles, and clams by mercury and other poisonous substances. The green mussels are ‘loaded with contamination’ he said.

Professor Peter Bacon, head of Zoology at U.W.I., said that although mangrove ecosystems could cope relatively well with pollution, continued discharge would harm coastal areas of the swamp. He was particularly concerned at the possible contamination of oysters and resultant spread of diseases like cholera.

WASA said they have contracted the replacement of the ‘unservicable’ leaking force main (responsible for the raw sewerage discharge), to be completed by June 2000. The treatment ponds are to be desludged; they haven’t been since 1978 and they no longer ‘treat’ the waste. A contract for the construction of a new treatment plant on the existing site, at a cost of approximately TT$170m, was awarded in January 2000. WASA say ‘physical works’ should be completed in three years.

Narine Lachan, Director of the Forestry Division, said he was unaware of the pollution problem as it related to Caroni Swamp. It had not been brought to his attention. He had not made any representations to WASA. I brought the Blue River picnic area to his attention. This is an area the Forestry Division constructed at considerable cost about four years ago on the only high spot (a few feet) of land in the entire Caroni Swamp, where it meets the sea. It consists of thatched picnic shelters and a boardwalk taking the visitor through mangrove and out into the gulf, Florida Everglades style.

When Nanan and I arrived we found the site run-down, smelling, contaminated with garbage spreading out into the mangroves.

“I am at a loss to know why we should spend all this money to encourage people to come into a fragile system to leave their waste,” an emotional Nanan lamented.

The walkway here — another walkway further into the swamp showed evidence of people lighting fires on it: a charred hole was plain to see — seems to have no

purpose other than being a safety hazard. There are no information boards telling the visitor about the vegetation and marine life they are looking at.

Nanan said the wood had generated fine cracks and parts were starting to decompose. “I’d hate to bring children here,” he said, leaning on the handrail which came away in his hands.

Below us the water swirled with strong currents.

The picnic site and walkways are supposed be maintained by the Forestry Division. David Chadee said they were unaware of these problems.

Back near the boatyard, several hundred feet into the swamp along a road made from dredgespoil only able to carry light vehicles — heavy ones would collapse it said Nanan — is the Caroni Visitor Centre.

This smart, costly looking structure is the Forestry Division’s and TIDCO’s new idea for Caroni Swamp. It was funded by the I.D.B. at an undeterminable cost, since no one in the Forestry Department, Planning and Finance Department, or TIDCO seems to know or want to say. TIDCO did admit it ‘was expensive’.

It is scheduled to open before the end of February as an information centre for the swamp, complete with audio-visual presentations, some of which Nanan will take. But he’s not happy with it.

He said it was built in the wrong place, too far into the swamp, on ground not solid enough — floors have collapsed, beams sunk and the roof has leaked — and though it is unnecessarily large it doesn’t have enough capacity because of poor design.

David Chadee saw no conflict in building it so far into the swamp. He thought the architecture was ‘just fine’ and enhanced the area.

“I’m not sure this ‘wonderful’ building is going to enhance the patrolling of the swamp,” said Nanan.

“I would have liked to see that money channelled into setting up a proper patrol system, not just 8am to 4pm, but 24 hours a day. The rest of the money could have been used on education programmes, taking the message into our schools, inviting them here, developing young minds to appreciate our environment — the older generation don’t. The money could have gone a long way towards that.”

Next to the centre is an expensive looking pedestrian bridge which is already cracking at its base. But, as Nanan said, why build a bridge at all when there is no pedestrian access to the swamp?

TIDCO took over responsibility for building the centre in 1999 following several years of ‘all sorts of problems’. They will hand it back to the Forestry Division when complete.

Winston Nanan’s Caroni Wetlands Scientific Trust aims to reverse the degradation of Caroni Swamp. It seeks to fund its programmes by enlisting support from Government, the local corporate sector, embassies, and agencies like the Smithsonian, Audubon and National Geographic.

Specifically, he would like to see the Trust manage Caroni Swamp the way he feels it should be managed, the way Asa Wright manage their reserve. This, he said, would free up Forestry Division resources for the Northern range and other areas. He has many proposals and these are presently being studied by the Forestry Department’s legal team.

Forestry Director Narine Lachan, however, when asked his views on the Trust taking over the management of Caroni Swamp was adamant: “You cannot interfere with state lands.”

End of discussion.

The omens are not good.

ENDS