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Letter to the Honourable Prime Minister Mitchell from Margaret Atwood & Graeme
Gibson.
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December 18, 2006
Dr. the Hon. Keith Mitchell, Prime Minister
Ministerial Complex, Botanical Gardens,
Tanteen, St. George’s
Grenada, West Indies
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Dear Mister Prime Minister:
Your Government’s apparent willingness to de-list the Hartman Estate as a National Park -
- so it can be to sold for a luxury property development -- shows a lamentable lack of concern,
not only for the future of your country’s national bird – the Grenada Dove -- but for
the whole notion of conservation and the preservation of critical natural habitats.
We believe that a decision to proceed would be an astonishing and shameful reversal, one
that would reflect badly on everyone concerned. It isn’t only that the Dove Sanctuaries will
be abandoned to luxury development -- even though such dismantling of a National Park
is almost unheard of; it is also the fact that the Estate qualifies as an Important Bird Area
(IBA), because it is the most secure home to the Grenada Dove and to eleven other
restricted range species. None of these creatures lives in isolation, or apart from the complex
web of its habitat, which is a critically important part of Grenada’s biodiversity.
We have received a copy of the letter to Michael Rands by Mr. Richardson Andrews on
your behalf. In this letter Mr. Andrews says us that the onus for developing a “coherent and
convincing concept for the preservation of the doves” had been handed over to the developer.
This is not promising.
Obviously nothing short of a full and adequately financed independent environmental
assessment would persuade serious people that any justice is likely to been done to the
Grenada Doves and their habitat.
There is a terrible irony in your Government’s readiness to threaten the continued existence
of Grenada’s National Bird – which is a symbol of your Country’s distinctiveness and
its culture – simply to provide sea-views to people from away.
Between sixty and eighty million people in the United States watch birds, and in Britain
there are over a million paid up members in The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.
The numbers in Canada will certainly be comparable. At a time when there’s a growing
concern, indeed a terrible sense of unease -- both by responsible Governments and their
peoples -- about what we are doing to the Natural World, these numbers will continue to
grow.
Environmental concerns have become a central political issue in a growing number of
countries; they also have a growing impact on the tourism industry. As a result, your
Government’s decision will generate widespread publicity.
We urge you, sir, to find a more appropriate location for this development, thus preserving
both the National Park and your country’s reputation as a marvellous and uniquely natural
tourist destination.
Respectfully
Margaret Atwood Graeme Gibson,
Joint Presidents, the Rare Bird Club
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