CATEGORY:MAJOR DEVELOPMENT ------------------------------- INSIDE GRENADA SUNDAY April 29,2007 KINGSTON, JAMAICA —The Nature Conservancy announced its firm opposition to legislation that would roll back protection for national parks in Grenada, allowing the sale of those parks to developers. A just-passed amendment to the Grenada’s National Parks and Protected Areas Act gives the Governor General of Grenada the right to sell national parks land to private developers. Contrary to statements made by the government, The Nature Conservancy is deeply concerned about the scope of this legislation. If Conservancy leaders had been made aware of this legislation, its leaders would have strongly protested the amendment before passage. “The Nature Conservancy and its many partners have been working throughout this region to protect lands and waters for nature and people, and this decision threatens to undermine decades of work, devastating critically important places, ” said Andreas Lehnhoff, the Vice President and Regional Director for Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. In a letter sent April 26 to Grenada minister of the environment Anne David-Antoine, the Conservancy outlined its opposition to the legislation and sought to clarify the record regarding a statement made by Ms. David-Antoine regarding the Conservancy’s position. “I was shocked to hear The Honorable Minister of the Environment, Anne David-Antoine, state in a radio program interview that the Conservancy ‘did not offer any protests about this proposed amendment,’” Lehnhoff said. “Had we been asked to comment on this legislation – without question – the Conservancy would have opposed it,” he said. Terry Adams Williams, Director of the Conservancy’s Southeast Caribbean Program, added, “This legislation seems to have been enacted so that private developers would have access to lands contained within any protected area, which is unacceptable. This move will have serious implications for Grenada’s national parks, in Mt. Hartman National Park, which represents some of the last remaining habitat of the Grenada Dove, a bird that exists in no other place in the world. The legislation will also impact the Woburn-Clark’s Court Bay Marine Protected Area, which has some of the healthiest mangroves in Grenada.” This legislation also reverses many of the recent positive steps and leadership the Grenadian government has taken in cooperation with The Nature Conservancy and others to develop and establish protected areas. Minister Antoine had previously declared that the government of Grenada would “protect 25 percent of its marine and terrestrial areas by 2020,” a bold move that spurred other Caribbean countries to make similar pledges, including the Bahamas, Belize, and possibly other countries in the Eastern Caribbean. Collectively, these declarations are being rolled into what is now known as the Caribbean Challenge. The Nature Conservancy and other partners also have been working with the government on a Master Plan for Grenada’s National System of Protected Areas. Terry Adams Williams concluded, “In recent years, Grenada had demonstrated leadership and long-term vision with its efforts to design and implement a representative and functional national system of protected areas. With the passage of this amendment, the government has undone all the good it accomplished – all for the short term gain to a private developer. The Nature Conservancy is a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for nature and people. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 102 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.