Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park (ECLSP) is a 112,640 acre park, established in 1959, and was the first land and sea park in the world. Its mission is to protect the marine environment of a portion of the Exuma Cays. Among others, the park includes Shroud Cay (the mangroves of the previous blog) and Warderick Wells, the content of this blog.
Exuma park and other places of historic interest are managed by the Bahamas National Trust who gets funding from the government. Funding also comes from grants, mooring fees, concessions and private individuals. The entire park has been a no-take marine reserve since 1986, a policy that has proven its worth with conch, grouper and lobster.
The park is protected and patrolled by the Bahamas Defence
Force.
Each of the individual national parks within ECLSP have a
park warden (like our National Park Superintendents) and we learned more about all
of this at Warderick Wells.
Warderick Wells is a major stop for most sailing vessels and
the parks are happy to have you volunteer in trade for mooring fees. We were happy to have a chance to volunteer, especially
since we were expecting 25-30 knot winds for a few days!
Not what we're used to seeing as a National Park Headquarters in the US. The parking lot is the dinghy dock.
Cherry runs the small headquarters building where she talks
to incoming boats, assigns mooring balls, collects fees, and sells the few
souvenirs available.
Henry is Warderick Wells warden and his job includes basically
everything else that needs to be done in the park. He is law enforcement,
maintenance manager, dives on the mooring balls every 3 months, is part of a
group that surveys grouper within ECLSP, and coordinates volunteers and his
staff of 1 to 3 people to name a few of his duties.
There are no amenities at Warderick Wells. Staying here is
like backcountry camping. There are no restroom facilities or showers; there is
no water for cruisers; no grocery or convenience store; no trash pick-up. Take
only pictures, leave only footprints is the motto to follow. The handful of
people who live on the island have housing with water of course which is a
reverse osmosis system, but they bring in their food once a month when they go
home to Nassau on leave. No supply boat brings in groceries. Sounds pretty
austere, but then consider the work location.
The waters here are about as blue as it gets.
Volunteering allowed us the opportunity to see the island
and get to know these amazing people better.
Our job began with trail maintenance and then, when it turned windy,
rainy and cold (OK, cold is a relative word), we moved closer to the shop.
The trails have some potential hazards if you’re not
careful!
the park's shop
There is one native mammal on the island – actually only one
mammal on the island at all – the hutia.
It was thought to be extinct but was discovered in the 1960s on East
Plana Cay and introduced to Warderick Wells in 1981.Thirteen hutia were brought
here and they have multiplied to around 3000! Hutia have no predators unless, I
was told, they bring in boa constrictors (bad idea!). In the meantime, these
little critters are eating and killing the trees. Something needs to be done,
but hutia are protected so can’t kill them. A nocturnal animal, we didn’t see
them until a cloudy day when one little ball of hair hung around the shop.
At the end of our volunteer days Henry invited
us to join him, Cherry and three of the Defence Force guys for happy hour on
Henry’s deck. What fun to talk to all of them and hear stories of their
adventures!
During our stay at Warderick Wells our friends Ryan and Renee arrived on their catamaran
Poerava. They have sailed the Bahamas before and so it is going to be like having our own personal guides along to show us some of the best places to go.
The weather has improved so off we go again to explore more of the Exumas.
Thanks! Great photos
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