LEGISLATION governing turtle-friendly lighting and vegetation has been languishing somewhere on a desk for the past seven years.
As a result, said field director with the Barbados Sea Turtle Project (BSTP), Dr Darren Browne, it’s solely up to beachfront property owners/developers to install lighting that would not lure hatchlings away from their path to the sea or deter females from coming up to nest.
Browne was speaking as he and assistant curator in natural history at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Kerron Hamblin, led the museum’s final Turtle Walk for 2015 last Saturday night.
Browne told the scores of walkers, including a camera crew, visitors as well as families with children that the BSTP had submitted proposals for the draft legislation for perusal of policymakers about seven years ago. However, it was still waiting for the proposals to be made into law.
As a result, he added, the discretion to put in “turtle-friendly lighting” rested solely with property owners. He noted females looking to nest avoided the bright lights of beach properties while hatchlings, which naturally follow the brightest light when they emerge from the sand, would follow the lights and sometimes venture into the road.
“We have very detailed guidelines on what is the best lighting and we found a balance between protecting guests and having good lighting for nesting turtles,” Browne said.
“You don’t have to put in red lights on the beach. It’s as simple as directing the lights down so they don’t spill out onto the beach and having a screen of vegetation on the beach so that lights are blocked from spreading across the beach.”
He said the proposals were backed by GPS data collected by the Sea Turtle Project, which showed that when a hotel closed for renovations and its lights were off, there was a significant increase in nesting activity in the area. However, when the hotel reopened, “you start getting dry runs in front of the hotel and nesting on either side”.
A battle
“So it’s something significant, but the property owners are not required by law to control their lights so that is a battle we’re still fighting,” Browne explained.
The field director also noted as more visitors were returning to swim with turtles or watch them as they nested, and as the island became known as an important nesting site for the endangered hawksbill, hotels would change their policy and “realise you can have the same lights but directed down”.
Browne went on to laud the owners of Palm Beach Condominiums in Hastings, Christ Church, who had installed turtle-friendly lighting and this had contributed to a 300 per cent increase of nesting in the area.
