A multi-sectoral approach should be taken to restore and protect Barbados’ largest wetland, the Graeme Hall Swamp, before it is too late.
That call was issued at a town hall meeting on Thursday night as members of The Land Conservancy, representatives of the Sustainable Ocean Alliance (SOA) of the Caribbean and other interested parties spoke of the importance of the Christ Church location to the ecosystem.
Travis Gardiner, research and development coordinator with SOA Caribbean, said a more proactive approach is needed to protect the Graeme Hall wetland.
He said it required a plan led by the Government and including civil society groups and academia, adding that Barbados could learn from best practices in the region.
Travis Gardiner
Should Barbados lose the Graeme Hall wetland, Gardiner said, that would be a major blow to the island’s environmental and sustainable development efforts.
“We want to ensure that we don’t lose Graeme Hall, to essentially go backwards,” he said, as he drew a parallel to the changes of the Constitution River swamp in The City over the years.
“We have taken Bridgetown from a swamp system, developed it and realised that we have to go back to the original system because nature knows best. So we want to ensure that through the conservation of Graeme Hall, we are not losing anything and we are also not spending additional money that can be saved through the preservation of the wetland ecosystem.
“The idea here going forward is that we want to balance development and conservation. It is not a zero-sum game and we understand that we live in a very land constricted space,” Gardiner added.
The Land Conservancy and Graeme Hall National Park team are leading a petition to get the Government to declare the Graeme Hall swamp an open space category two (OS2) conservation area.
“The restoration of Graeme Hall really requires a multi-sectoral approach involving various sectors of government, enacting of land use policies in areas around the ecosystem to determine the best course of action going forward for out-sea water exchange, [and] the restoration of lost habitat in terms of trees and water space,” said Gardiner.
“We also want to engage civil society organisations to promote community participation. We also want to include academia to ensure that we document the current health of the ecosystem and then also document improvements going forward because a lot of times we react and then there is no documentation to rely on. So we want to make sure that all elements of the ecosystem development are captured.”
Pointing to the importance of the wetland for bird species, Gardiner said it played a significant role, especially during the migratory season.
However, he expressed concern that the wetland has been prone to compromise over the years and continued to face several threats from a range of activities, including agricultural run-offs, contamination, infilling and deforestation, which are leading to the disappearance of fish and bird species from the area.
Gardiner said protecting the swamp land would lead to several benefits including repopulation of the area with a variety of fish and birds, overall regeneration of the ecosystem and prevention of flooding in the nearby communities.
“We need to ensure that people living around the swamp are also comfortable and are able to use the services of the ecosystem. A big concern is about raw sewage in the area. There is a huge health hazard as it relates to being in the environs of raw sewage,” he said.
Noting that the wetland provided critical protection for the nearby coral reef system and helped to break the wind on land during hurricanes and storm surges, Gardiner said: “Here we are in 2023 attempting to make sure that relevant parties understand that we cannot impact our native ecosystem inland and expect that the systems out to sea won’t be affected.”
Meanwhile, conservationist and Executive Director of The Land Conservancy Lani Edghill said she was concerned that authorities are yet to provide a detailed plan regarding a long-term solution for sewage management at the nearby South Coast Sewage Treatment Plant.
Lani Edghill
Edghill recalled the temporary outfall that was put in place about five years ago, following the south coast sewage problem.
She said she was concerned that should the island be affected by a major hurricane, the sewage system on the south coast could “fail”.
“In 2019, a report was done . . . and subsequent scientific analysis was done in the swamp and it showed high levels of faecal streptococci and faecal coliform in the water, high levels of agricultural chemicals, heavy metals and other chemicals from commercial and residential runoffs,” said Edghill.
“We have a problem. There have not been any studies done since then so we don’t actually know what’s in the water and we don’t actually know what is happening. When Barbados was hit by Elsa in 2021, we had really bad tree damage in Graeme Hall . . . . So, not so great for Graeme Hall,” she added. (MM)
