Bio-diversity

With the support of a Global Environment Facility s Small Grants Programme (GEF/SGP)/UNDP grant, Environment Tobago (ET) collaborated with the community of Belle Garden, Tobago to implement the previous project, Sustainable Community Based Wetland Assessment for the Improvement of Conservational and Educational Efforts which recently came to a close. An unplanned but welcomed outcome was the establishment of the Belle Garden Wetland Association (BGWA), a community-based organisation dedicated to the promotion of conservation, education and sustainable livelihoods in Belle Garden, Tobago. In addition to the launch of a dynamic community group, this project saw the launch of a successful, locally run eco-tourism operation centred in the Belle Garden Wetland. The project wrapped up successfully in September 2009. This current project seeks to build on the strengths of the prior initiative to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of the Belle Garden Wetland, by providing opportunities to increase the stewardship of a sustainable Belle Garden Wetland Association community initiative. This project will: 1. Contribute to the conservation and stewardship of the Belle Garden Wetland through increased biodiversity monitoring and education via: Training interested community members in monitoring the locally harvested blue crab which has been under threat from hunters, developing an educational module on butterflies for local schools, and developing an education and outreach module on the effects and control of solid waste in the wetland. 2. Contribute to sustainable livelihoods by increasing eco-tourism opportunities and product development via: a 100 m2 (10,000 sq ft) interpretive butterfly garden and training of eco-tour guides in butterfly ecology and maintenance of the butterfly garden. 3. Mentoring and organisational strengthening by providing micro-enterprise and outreach training to members of the BGWA to facilitate the continued functioning and growth of this initiative. The successful resolution of this project will set the Belle Garden Wetland Association as a dynamic, locally and regionally relevant, financially stable, sustainable, community-based organisation with a diverse set of skills grounded in the sustainable stewardship of a valuable Caribbean coastal wetland.

Trinidad and tobago