We arrive at our destinations via different routes. The decision to form a land trust in Trinidad and Tobago is my latest effort at public service. I could be tilling infertile ground, but how did I get here?

While putting together a small series of articles on land use, I realized our country uses laws handed down from a time in history when an aristocracy used legislature with one primary goal - to protect their wealth from those in the ‘other’ class.

Environmentalists today must be quite mad to think they can hold sway over the land use and decision making process using those edicts, especially if any part of it goes against the rights of a property owner.

It’s true recently the PNM government had a double blow to its plans to put down aluminum smelters in the southland, but those were popular and widely held opinions against an unpopular entity. At no time was an individual perceived to be under pressure of losing personal property.

So as I worked on those articles I came to realize that it’s a ‘no-no’ to create situations which erode the right of the individual to enjoy his land. Environmental advocacy in Trinidad and Tobago today is about bringing situational awareness, helping persons to re-examine how to go about enjoying their land in a sustainable manner. Given the penchant for unplanned construction in our country, it is an unproductive effort to say the least.

What to do? The only relief in sight suggests that the environmentalists must own the land they want to preserve in its natural state. Simple enough. However given that the only legal way to make big money is in the construction industry, it may mean our environmental advocate may be unable to afford land for conservation. Unless he buys it as part of a group of like-minded persons who would contribute to the cause of purchasing land for green spaces for posterity - a land trust.

What is a Land Trust? A land trust is a nonprofit organization that, as all or part of its mission, actively works to conserve land by undertaking or assisting in land or conservation easement acquisition, or by its stewardship of such land or easements.

Land trusts work with landowners and the community to conserve land by accepting donations of land, purchasing land, negotiating conservation agreements on land (called conservation easements), and stewarding conserved land through the generations to come.

A land trust works for conservation instead of the generation of profits through land sales. This means income derived from research studies on the lands, no-impact eco-tourism and innovations like carbon sequestration credits.

Most land trusts are community-based and can connect to local needs, so they’re well-equipped to identify land that offers critical natural habitat as well as land offering recreational, agricultural and other conservation value.

How does a Land Trust Work? Land trusts work to implement three fundamental human ideals: Volunteerism, Community Spirit and Connection to the Land. By holding land or conservation easements on land with high conservation value, land trusts counter the economic model of poorly planned development and sprawl. Also land trusts communicate and demonstrate the powerful benefits of land on our lives and on the human spirit.

More questions arise. How will a land trust in our twin island state work? It seems optimistic to say the least that a population bent on building, cynical about community based schemes to the extreme, and also weathering an economic downturn, will consider putting money into land trust.

There are solutions, always are. Trinidad and Tobago are unique islands for many reasons, not the least being our green spaces. Our islands ability to provide oxygen for other climes must not be understated, nor is the love of these islands held by its sons and daughters abroad. Similar feeling are also common among friends of the islands, who may have worked here, visited on holiday or for festivals.

A comprehensive marketing campaign led by a key environmental group stands a fair chance to garner donations from persons who already have an idea of the value of lands held for the benefit of earths survival. The logistics of accountability are documented well enough, as are practitioners who can administer the rules plentiful on the ground.

If you have an interest, any interest at all - even if its to query the idea, I’d like the feedback. Already I’ve spoken to some key people. Interest is growing. The plan is to find a home for the idea, and a group to administer it. All like minds are welcome.

However talk is cheap. I’m going to start this movement with a donation of a website, brochures and some advertising input for year. The value of those services are the first entry into the Land Trust Account Book.

Before we departed the classrooms of childhood to enter other forums for learning, we were made aware of how its natural phenomena and geographical assets impacted on a country’s global profile. Who hadn’t heard of the Northern Lights, the Amazon, the Rivers Ganges and Nile, before blowing ten candles off a cake?

That the school curriculum then only focussed on the larger than life examples may have something to do with the island mentality that what we have just isn’t worth much. At least not if something bigger is there to look at.  However bigger isn’t always better is it?

Imagine you are in California USA, with great plans to build another golf course around the creek on your latest purchase of land. If someone several states away is making a decision to build a dam, say in Arizona, Nevada or even far away as Utah, there is the real possibility of your watercourse drying, as would your investment. So someone somewhere in that larger picture makes a decision affecting either you or a dam builder upstate. Thus is ‘Freedom’ curtailed. In the continental US there are many owners, many locations and many rules governing usage of the natural environment.

In this little two by four state Trinidad and Tobago, how fortunate are we to have our own rivers, our own forests, even our own wildlife? In the big countries as we saw, it’s very a different feeling.  Over there, management, movement and politics all play a part to dampen the joy of the ‘ownership’ we in Trinidad and Tobago enjoy unconditionally. So we speak of the privilege of ownership.

Its all subjective though, this privilege. We are a small population in a tiny place and we do not employ the right to manage our assets responsibly. Examples abound of environmental irresponsibility. Where to start fixing the damage? That’s the dilemma.

We cannot really look to the Law, its essentially not performing as a guardian of natural assets and resources. Certainly not for generations of those who are yet to be born. The legal system we currently employ protect the rights of the landowner as personal property. That this law was in effect written by a ruling class at a time where aristocracy and serfdom were the order of the day seems a trifle not worth consideration.

Look to the politicians and expect only token acknowledgement unless the topic on the table can lose them votes - or win public support for them. The latter is a rare case as environmental advocacy rarely creates friends. In a bizarre evolution of the need to represent the good of the Trinidad and Tobago public, representatives merely seek the good of their supporting public.

In trying to save the natural environment for future generations there’s no use looking to the state agencies, they are essentially puppets if anyone cares to admit it. Big business can only go so far as their PR departments can impact, or as a champion on the Board may wish to indulge. ‘Dead in the water!’, that’s what a pragmatic environmentalist may offer to fellow tree huggers crying the watersheds full as they moan the crime of the ages.

Disdain for the rights of others is apparently the order of the day in our twin island state, and no more so than right here in Tobago today. This little slice of paradise is just 116 square miles, populated by what amounts to a single family of displaced souls from across the Atlantic, yet from its shoddy appearance they manage to hold little pride in an advertently acquired asset.

The problems Tobago faces (there just isn’t space to list all which its bigger sister suffers) in land development can be squarely dumped at the door of the landowners. Each parcel which comes under the blade of an earth mover, each rock which is displaced without due regard for its aesthetic or ecological value is revealing disdain to all else, shown by the present titleholder, tenant, or lessee.

That they would arbitrarily make decisions only on the shortest term economic outlook cannot augur well for the next generation. That they care not for the common good of all the islands residents, which includes plant, animal and human life is Disdain.

That anyone in a position to take care of this small piece of land would expect others to educate and enhance, mayhap even enforce, is truly not holding in mind the saying that “the land we hold now is not a gift from our ancestors, it’s a loan from our descendants”.

Land holding is a privilege which denotes an element of freedom. Disdain for privilege of any type leads to erosion of freedoms- sooner rather than later. That a section of society looks on in disbelief that another part would  place the quality of island life at risk cannot be a good thing. Something has to give. Nature certainly will not cave in. Therefore Society must.

Tobago defies the logistic that ‘big’ equals better, as the Buccoo Reef and the rainforest at the Main Ridge attests. Yet so small a treasure seems elusive to manage, if the performance of the present stewards is looked at objectively. Maybe in thinking small, we all remain so. Could still be that Caricom, Common Shores and a Commonwealth are ‘big’ solutions to a series of small problems.

Therein lies a conundrum. As with the erstwhile golf course developer we mentioned earlier, one can not pursue all ‘freedoms’ under the edicts. As it concerns improper or inconsiderate usage, why should people be told what to do if its pretty much apparent that it is ?

If they continue using land irresponsibly Tobagonians and Trinidadians may find their rights restricted. Mechanisms and conventions to hold us accountable are effectively already signed on the world stage. Only the flagrant disdain by some for what is smart and right will spring the noose on privileges we all hold dear.  Beggar thy neighbour once and get away with it. Twice is risky.

Can you imagine living in a country that’s wired for 110 volts and every electrical appliance in it is designed for 220? At times one gets the surreal feeling that the Tobago works something like that. Things run here so slowly if at all, that it must be the electricity - or the water, or the air. Maybe it’s a local  flux.

Environment Tobago has the dubious and unenviable distinction of being the naturalists voice for those who  feel strongly  about keeping things green. It’s not an easy chore by any means, especially since it seems the public  deems other activities , such as pouring concrete, as having more relevance to their lives .  Recently, in an evaluative exercise, several of the NGO members put out the theory that the proposed works advanced  by a community based organization like ET may be negatively affected, even short circuited, due to a lack of enough localized ‘current’.

Shocking news? Not really. Especially if the facts are examined. Environment Tobago has been accused of doing some good work in the past. They cleaned beaches, counted damaged coral heads, maybe even pulled a few strands of turtle grass that tried to establish new  growth in the Nylon Pool. ( less polluted water there than in the Bon Accord Lagoon). ‘Nice, keep it up, and here - accept this award, go ye forth and accomplish more’.  Well maybe not.

Our volunteers are becoming jaded. Their interests may soon be taken elsewhere. The future of groups who concern themselves with issues and not symptoms is doubtful in this present island scenario. It begs the question;  If one cannot win at something , would it be worth it to trouble taking up the proverbial baton that next time - unless One is Don Quixote, most people move on.

So is it to be likened to electricity then?  Does it have to have a flux in the air for movement to occur? To this writer it does. That the conservationist vibe - if you will, does not  exist in Tobago is pretty apparent. You can see it in the trends - all our fixes are targeted for the quick return. You may argue that we have  strong  initiatives  that encompass youth,  women, the handicapped and all the races.  The sting is that it’s the present faces, this generation , that are targeted for considerations, not those who are yet to come.  Conservation of anything is not part of island lexicon right now.

‘No idea comes before its time’ someone said, but can we as a society only derive energy and incentive from things that only produce results in our time? Is concern for the environment (to narrow it all down)  to much for us to handle if we are not to benefit personally. It’s a shallow thought,  but  its made even more vile on reflection. Are we willing to sacrifice the well being of our descendants so we can create more personal wealth  in our time?

Well personalizing the issue may be ugly indeed, but the fact is there are not many persons with a local birthright who will be remembered  as champions of Tobago’s  watershed and fresh water supply. It seems most people here are too busy chopping trees down. That others from elsewhere  may be unable to achieve it  due to a lack of popular support,  even if they had the inclination,  augurs badly for the future.

Our hardwiring for destructive behavior may well come home to haunt us. If the NGO’s and other organizations with pure purpose or mission keep failing  then the first bastion of our  governance system is threatened. As anarchy becomes a real risk, the destruction of all that’s  intrinsic to life as we know it looms. Doomsday? Political ploy? Far  from  it. Let’s look at facts.

It’s been several years that a plan to co-manage the Kilgwyn wetland has been sent to our local THA administrative offices for perusal . It must have disappeared in the wiring, or could it be that the spark went out of that idea? Or was it simply that it had little fiscal benefit to any particular person from this generation?
What happened to the idea is not the real issue though, it’s the fact that Kilgwyn is worse off than when Environment Tobago first went there.

That time it was a dump for most local household garbage, give or take the odd rotting carcass. These days  the restorative efforts of the NGO there are covered by new piles of garbage, new corpses, several other classes of refuse reflecting Tobago’s growing  prosperity. The new threat? Human habitat encroachment. They are bulldozing Kilgwyn to death.

That no one is listening to the voices of reason is a bad thing. That the transgressions to the sanctity of wetland  space is being violated throughout Tobago, is criminal. That the State allows it even though law forbids it, well words defy.

What to say dear reader? Environment Tobago cannot take the law into its hands. Solutions are short in coming, ideas  are drying off the old brain faster than the Tobago water table is being  choked off and polluted. The only way out may be to appeal to people to protect the children of the future indeed. That is a lofty goal, better than bulldozing Cove to create 220 volts. Or was that a part of a goal called 2020? Beats me. Maybe my circuits are just on overload - Too much current and no movement can do that.

We  are conveniently located to most of the popular rental properties in Tobago. Have a quick peek to see just how much so.

The ‘+’ sign will take you closer. The red  line shows the shortest route to our stables. The purple line shows the trail ride.

We currently have a two hour trail ride on mornings. Generally we’d leave the yard at 7.30 in order to beat the heat, save the day, or get you back in time for a late breakfast. We will pick you if you live anywhere between Mt.St. George in the north and Crown Point at lands end south.

We have a tour limit of one per day. Consider too that if someone books, the tour is configured to that persons requirements. If he or she  has a partner, even up to three, we can do the ride.  Yes, we will do a ride if its just one person but in that case we may take another if they both have fairly equal skills on horseback.

The weight limit for a rider is about 180lb / 13.3 stone / 8okg. We will accept children if they have been on horseback by themselves somewhere before.  About  novices: No problem with us since we expect at least one novice per group. More than two novices in one group is - difficult.

We offer helmets as an option, and ask that you dress with at least trousers, and full footwear. Jeans and trainers are fine. All rides are accompanied by a guide. Prices are $50US per per person for a ride. Cash only please. Local currency is fine. Sterling is fine, Euros are fine.

Booking in advance is the only way to do it. You can email bertrand@bhikarry.net to lock in on long term bookings.

On the way for the monthly meeting of the Buccoo Reef Management Committee I walked through the Scarborough Botanic Gardens. Tobago was covered by a dismal sky, a feeling emphasized even more by the fact it was a rainy morning in what should be the dry season.

As I trudged down to the Admin building, I saw several gardeners gathering the nightly deposit of leaves and flowers. Normally when you see people raking on the streets there is a certainty that there will be manmade garbage underfoot. No rubbish today, not here. The ground was covered with sweet smelling flowers, brown leaves, and not a piece of litter anywhere. It was a soul lifting feeling. It all made such a strong impact on me that I had to tell the gardener out loud, “You have the best job in the island you know”.

He looked at me in disbelief so I had to qualify my statement. “Most times when people rake they gather garbage. Not you, you get to smell flowers, walk among trees, maybe even gather fruit.”

As I continued on to my meeting place I managed to look back at him. His expression had lightened, his pace had quickened. It may have been a fanciful thing but I could swear his attention to his work, his view of his pile of garbage had improved a bit.

Although we called it the Looking Out Stables, the project was never destined to be just a horse riding facility, or even a home for horses exclusively. In fact our stables came out of Kay’s idea to own a ‘piece of land, a place to make a garden, grow some food, and generally increase our self sufficiency’.

Looking back now on this homestead we call the LOS, I can see that it was always she who dug the ground, planted, reaped - if the resident chickens or the peafowl allowed that luxury. My role evolved into that of the laborer, the muscle, the one with a guilty conscience who took on farm chores only after looking on, sometimes for what must have been interminable periods.

It’s coming along nicely though. The horses are the centerpiece, my own pride and joy, after which comes my other pride and joy, the dogs, after which comes my third pride and joy, the birds. Get the idea? I’m an animal sort of person, Kay is the planter, the green thumb, the farmer. The one whose products are subject to scratching , digging and munching forays of the four and two legged creatures I pamper.

There are perks to this kind of life now that I look back. There’s the exercise, the calm sense of achievement which comes after a fence is repaired, or when a hole is dug for some plant. Maybe most beneficial is the deep concentration that working with the animals allow, to the point where I may be shoeing a horse, but thinking of some arcane web development problem - the other pastime I enjoy. I’m thinking it must be the same for her, as Kay is always poking around the land, toting heavy tools, and attempting herculean tasks that so many women eschew these days.

With the practice comes the perfection, and recently I find that Kay and I interchange our tasks easily enough, although she doesn’t trust me with cutting grass close to her plants, nor would I want her to shoe a horse, at least until she demands to do so. Maybe tomorrow?

Visitors? We have had our share here at the farm. Some local couples drive over on weekends to see the horses, and to enquire about the labor required to keep a homestead going. Travelers from abroad pop in often too, ostensibly to see the horses, before booking rides, but they move on to observe the other aspects of our life within minutes, and if they are lucky, we find the time to drink a cup of coffee or have some freshly made fruit juice with them.

Children are welcome here at the farm - Now. In the beginning, maybe it was my intolerant nature, or the tendency of parents to over protect their offspring, I usually came over as rude, God Forbid. I’m over that now. Maybe I’ve just learned to handle parents better.

At age eleven, I may have behaved a bit silly that time I stole everyone’s geometry sets and hid the entire lot in the gym lockers of Iere High. I did it to piss someone off - I think. At seventeen, I may have been bordering impossible when I pelted Mr. Jones house every Saturday night because he once told me I must never talk to his daughter. EVER!

Indeed when I contemplate the grimacing faces of my past, many with murderous eyes seeking to hurt me through that virtual rearview mirror, I wonder if I may have cornered the franchise for being the most exasperating individual on the face of the earth. I must have derived some satisfaction from being difficult, because I never mended my ways. It stops now. Here’s why.

Because I learned the meaning of two words today. Exasperation and empathy. It came about as I was taking my dogs to the beach this lovely Good Friday morning. I had been looking foward to this (chore) since the dawn lightened, even as I struggled to cut the grass off the slippery dew soaked hillside - in between bouts of wondering if Kay was actually fitter than I. (She usually sees about cutting back our omnipresent, ever encroaching jungle).

Taking off from home without a word to anyone, floating in a tender mindset delicately set back in that zone I go to when I’ve been working on some project, I realised the dogs and I were driving behind a truck filled with debris. Dumping a on Good Friday morning? On the biggest holiday weekend in the Tobago calendar? My God! (Well, Even I can use his name on the Holy weekend, No?)

The high frustration factor I felt could have been Judas Iscariots treachery, or it may have been my reaction to the mounting evidence that my work in Environment Tobago was in vain. I had been putting a fair bit of time on the NGO website, working with the management team, in so far that the sight of the garbage spilling over the tray tripped something in my mind. I ran the pickup into the verge alongside the loaded Nissan ten wheeler - What was I thinking? To run him off the road? Yeh!

Maybe because he was a believer and did’nt think killing stupid people on a Good Friday was forgiveable, he stopped the truck. I admonished him gently (see earlier article applied diplomacy) that he was in error, if in fact he was considering emptying his cargo on the roadside.

The guy never once stopped talking into his cellphone, but all the same did’nt look as if he was considering moving away from the perfectly good tipping point I had shown him. Ever noticed how calls suddenly occur when you are talking to someone who has reason to not talk to you? I waited - Por Nada do I revel in my studies of human nature.

Three long minutes later, with him still talking to SOMEONE, I caught him looking at me. Gotcha!. ‘You know, you could get in real trouble if you throw rubbish here man?’

Must have been an exceptionally good hookup from b-Mobile, he kept his phone to his ear and told me calmly, as if to a child, ‘IzOkay, I nah dump it ere, I just stopped to talk on de celfone’. Never having been a strong believer myself, I managed the diplomatic look of shock, eschewing the harsh layer of attitudinal scorn those who are in the fight for RIGHT adopt so easily.

Several tension filled seconds elapsed. Finally he looked over at the road beyond me, giving the non-verbal signals of a trucker about to roll over poor hapless pick-ups and managed to do a three point turn on the narrow Orange Hill road with his cellphone still stuck to his ear. I trundled onward, truly as pissed off as anyone I’ve ever had cause to make unhappy in my own distinguished career.

So much for taking the dogs to the beach. I was driving there, but my mind was on the battlefield. I knew he was going to offload his garbage at any convenient spot on the backroads of the Orange Hill area. I even had a fair idea where, now that he had run off (in fear).

I reached the Claude Noel Highway and it was only on flicking the turn signal to go left onto the Plymouth Road that I realised that I was angry enough to do anything to stop that guy. Plymouth Road offers an ingress to the only spot he could have gone to after turning away from Orange Hill and it seems I was heading there (damn Japanese pick-ups with inbuilt navigation. U think?).

This man, this representative of our litterbug mentality, had made me so mad that I no longer could consider beach time with Brown Dog, Charley and Sushi. I could only focus on chasing him down and staying with him until he took his refuse to the Studley Park landfill (or else). Somewhere then, in that wild time, in my careless rage-filled speeding down the dirt track, I came to realise just how much I must have driven innocent people to anger in my own time. You see what I mean about exasperation and empathy?

I eventually took the dogs home and gave them a proper bath. Then I wrote this. I’m a changed man. Seriously!

I knew they existed even as a child. I may have used one or two without realising fully what it all meant. However it was’nt until one day well into adulthood when Sam Lehman told me she was ‘going to see a man about a horse’ that I became a fan of the euphemism.

Her statement (Sam is short for Samantha) held my attention that early morning - we were at a horse breeding farm somewhere in Ocala, boondocks Florida. I knew we were there to look over some two year olds she had in mind to buy, so naturally I followed her back of the barn after I had mulled over her words and eventually interpreted the line as I could follow if I wanted to witness the arcane dealing so much a part of the horse trade.

Okay, so it was the cold. North Florida is cold at six in the morning, especially in wide open spaces, and the farm we were on occupied over ten thousand acres. It was just an average plot if you considered the neighbors larger spreads on all sides - far as the eye could see. My mind does’nt function as well as it could when the extremities are shouting harsh messages to my nerve ends - cluttering up my processing bandwidth as it were.

I barreled around the building - the barn itself was the size of a soccer field, maybe it could have held a stadium too, and some showers if pressed. Expecting to see, what? Maybe a brick red sixteen hand thoroughbred, speed and Derby potential flowing out of the sweat the farm hands would have had forced out of him from an early morning workout.

I certainly didnt expect to see Sam squatting on the flat sandy soil immediately out of view and pissing a storm - a gusher really. No fast talking Florida horseman, no specimen of equine exactitude, only runnels of urine diluted beer (we had been drinking well into the night).

No maiden she was, Sam didnt even consider a blush, leaving me to turn away in a slow enough pirouette so that I could maintain a man of the world sort of cool. Lucky for me I was really cold. The resultant savoir-faire was just tardy reception of messages to bandwidth-cluttered brain.

Now I think of Sam and her ‘Gotta see a man about a horse’ every time I want to take a pee, and there’s someone to tell, or ask for excuse. I’ve even used it on poor unsuspecting souls who I merely want to avoid Usually it works, as they make allowance for me being a horseman, with unnamed and important horse things on the boil.
Heh! Keep reading me if you want some more horsefeathers,  speaking metaphorically of course.

Two transgressions in as many minutes, and several more as the morning progressed. If I had the ability to speed up time, it would be almost as if my drive through Orange Hill to Scarborough was another chase scene in ‘Grand theft auto’.

The sad thing, it wasn’t anything as harmless as a dose of virtual violence and mayhem. I was in the middle of an introspective ‘traffic’ moment when the Jerk driving the truck in front of me decided he couldn’t wait on the morning traffic to sort itself out at the intersection-the main one into our fine capital.

I watched enthralled as the 10 ton dumpster, fully loaded, climbed up the kerb, watched as he negotiated past several pedestrians,  forcing them off really, then peered in morbid fascination as the cracking cement covers that constitutes the pavement buckled under the wheels. I was so into visualing the truck sinking into the drain beneath, but it didn’t happen. Pity.

Several metres along, as I drove off the newly painted grid, Scarborough not yet receding in my rearview mirror, comes a blue and white. Now in Tobago police vehicles hustling about in the morning, mean one thing, or several instances of the same thing. It’s dropping of the kids to school and the womenfolk to work, with uniformed drivers too-if the rank carries the perk.

This brand spanking SUV flowed smoothly, authoritatively, and nonchalantly over the intersection, by-passed the traffic using the white line separators to which the motoring public is off-limits and sped away.

That combination of driver arrogance, the placid nature of the onlookers, who I’m sure if they were asked, would be unaware a crime had taken place, drove home (pardon pun) to me why we presently suffer the ravages of crime against our homes, businesses, and our persons.

Our society has become inured to the concept of law, and of order, in the society. People have come to view the laws which protect us, as a form of bondage, not a tool of freedom. It’s an insidious process which begins at the home, is nurtured in schools, on the sporting fields, in business, and inevitably, matures into full fledged disregard for anything that doesn’t fit the need of the individual. If the individual is ‘qualified’ then he, or she, for that matter, takes the path most suited to the need at the time, and to hell with law and order.

Respect for the manmade laws of a society does not come naturally to the individual, but it becomes a conditioned reflex as the individual practices the codes of living within the community, or society that exists at the time. In Trinidad and Tobago, we obviously have neglected to inculcate the values of those social strictures, or laws, in the past decades. Maybe we have not done so for the entire length of time we have been an ‘enabled’ or Independent country.

It may be that looked at in this light, the crime workshops, the public consultations, and other similar stakeholder events are doomed to failure. We cannot fix the crime problem, as we call the societal deviancy which exist now, with a haphazard approach. We simply must begin to recreate a situation where respect for the laws which protect us all becomes the only game in town.