Big Birds and Bush Tea

Speaking shortly before the vote on the 4^th Amendment to the Hovensa Concession Agreement, Senator Myron Jackson recalled a time when large numbers of flamingos could be seen in St. Croix.   

St. Croix’s youngest generation has never experienced this natural spectacle, but according to a 2010 online article, as late as the 1990’s “St. Croix used to have small groups of flamingos that would visit the West End Salt Pond in the fall and winter.” 

Nearby Anegada, British Virgin Islands was also once home to the exotic flamingo “in large numbers, possibly by the tens of thousands.”  By the 1960's,” however, “when large-scale development of Anegada was initiated…a few older birds remaining… eventually died or flew off.”

Yesterday, the Director of Insular Affairs for the United States Department of the Interior was a speaker at the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority VIenergize kick-off event in St. Croix.  Director Pula began by expressing surprise and disappointment that neither his hotel nor the downtown restaurant where he dined could provide him with a cup of “bush tea.”    He went on to say that, like him,  too many visitors who come here seeking an authentic Virgin Islands experience are leaving without finding so much as a simple cup of local tea.

So, what do local tea and vanished flamingos have in common?  And why concern ourselves at all with big pink birds and bush tea at a time when St. Croix is still reeling from the body slam Hovensa delivered last year?  At a time when the Legislature's solid refusal to grant the corporate giant more concessions has added to our uncertainty about the future?  

Why?  Because one visitor's lament about tea, like one senator's reminiscence about flamingos, reveals the deeper and more damaging truth that in our nearly fifty-year relationship with Hess/Hovensa and in our blind pursuit of the fabled American dream, we have sacrificed too much of the cultural, natural, human, and historical resources upon which the authenticity of a people rests.

Even if we dismiss Mr. Pula and his “bush tea” as a small loss for one person; even if we dismiss Senator Jackson’s memories as simple nostalgia for his childhood, that would not change the reality that one man’s tea and another’s flamingos are symbols of an immeasurable loss suffered by the people of the Virgin Islands.  How, after all, does one measure a diminished legacy left for future generations?

Every crisis is also an opportunity to act.  Together with our anxiety about the future and the economic hardships we are experiencing, there is a real opportunity to change direction toward industries like eco-tourism, organic agriculture, and green energy.  Virgin Islanders spent $309,000,000 (three hundred and nine million dollars!) on "foods, feeds, and beverages" in 2010.  Just half of that could support a robust local agriculture and food production industry.

Rather than returning to dependency on a single corporate polluter, we have the opportunity to break from the politics of expediency and personal gain and to leverage our human and natural resources in a wholistic development plan to achieve and sustain economic opportunity, food sovereignty and food security, as well as the health and well-being of our people and our environment.  These goals are noble, attainable, highly synergistic, and one hundred percent consistent with Virgin Islands traditional values.

Will we continue to preside over a diminishing legacy and to suffer more irreversible losses from our environment, from our personal experience, from our children, and eventually from our collective memory?  Or will we insist on our rights to a richer future?

In 1992 The Conservation Agency and the Guana Island Wildlife Sanctuary began reintroducing flamingos to Anegada and nearby Guana.   

There were unanticipated stumbling blocks, such as the lack of wildlife protection laws to prevent tourists who “would frequently muck right into the salt ponds for a picture," often trampling the flamingos’ nesting mounds in the process.  

Today, however, large numbers of the beautiful and exotic flamingo are again “a striking spectacle to witness” on Anegada.

Happily, Director Pula did not remain disappointed.  Thanks to the outstanding catering provided for the VIenergize kick-off by local eatery, Pizza Gusto, he did get to enjoy a cup of delicious “bush tea” before leaving St. Croix.  A small victory, perhaps, but we have the power to make it the harbinger of tremendous progress that will bring organic local teas, fruits, vegetables, baked goods, fish, meats, poultry and eggs to hotel and restaurant menus, to grocery store and supermarket shelves, and to family dinner tables throughout our islands.

Changing our future is first and foremost a matter of changing our minds about the future we desire, the future we deserve, and the future it is within our power to create. 

To learn more about eco-tourism, click here

For more information about VIenergize, email VIenergize Services (VIeS) at vies@viwapa.vi

Picture Sources:

N.d. Photograph. The Conservation Agency, Jamestown, RI. Web. 10 Aug 2013. <http://www.theconservationagency.org/tca.htm>. 

MacDonald, Jean. Asase Ye Duru. N.d. Graphic. Adinkra Symbols of West Africa: Mpatapo, Portland, OR. Web. 10 Aug 2013. <http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_site.htm>.

Information Sources:

Lewin, Aldeth. "What are godwits and golden plovers and a flamingo doing here?." Virgin Islands Daily News [St. Thomas, USVI] 16 OCT 2010, n. pag. Web. 10 Aug. 2013. <http://virginislandsdailynews.com/what-are-godwits-and-golden-plovers-and-a-flamingo-doing-here-1.1049812>.

"Flamingo Reintroduction to Anegada, British Virgin Islands." The Conservation Agency. The Conservation Agency. Web. 10 Aug 2013. <http://www.theconservationagency.org/flamingos.htm>. 

Hamano, Aya, and Wali Osman. United States. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Bureau of Economic Analysis (Bea) Releases Estimates of Gross Domestic Product, Gross Domestic Product by Industry, Compensation by Industry, and Detailed Consumer Spending for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Washington, DC: , 2012. Web. <http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/general/terr/2012/vigdp_10152012.pdf>.