>>Destination: Great Inagua

Burning Desire

Great Inagua might lack the amenities of the Bahamas' more famous islands, but for the intrepid traveler, the spectacle of thousands of fiery-pink flamingos dancing and flying more than makes up for it.

By Frank Graham Jr.

 

 

"If you're a beach lover, Inagua is not for you,” opines Fodor's Bahamas (2005), reflecting the usual travel guide's conviction that a beach without hotels is simply not worth a visit. Undaunted, Henry Nixon, warden of Inagua National Park on Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas, pulled his Ford truck alongside a low scrub ridge separating a rudimentary road from the sea. “Let's see what's goin' on out dere,” he said in his lilting Bahamian voice as I followed him out of the truck.

A cold front had hung over the Bahamas all day, bringing strong winds and rough seas. When we mounted the ridge, we saw the shallow surf advancing on the beach in lively white rollers. And there, nearly a hundred yards offshore, was what Nixon had glimpsed—a shimmering slash of pink, a surreal line of some 40 flamingos shoulder to shoulder as it were, meeting the rollers head on. As we watched in amazement, the birds alternately lay prone in the sea to let the waves sweep around them, wallowing in the surge like playful puppies, and stood upright again to flap the water from their long wings. “I never saw de boids doin' dot before,” Nixon said, astonished at seeing behavior not previously reported on his native island.

I had returned to Great Inagua after an absence of 23 years (see “De Fillymingo Mon!” Audubon, January-February 1983), and still the sun- and salt-blasted island and its gorgeous, long-legged birds seemed an almost perfect fit. The island, the southernmost of the Bahamas (Little Inagua lies off its northern tip), has no scenery in the conventional travel-guide sense. Flamingos supply its splendor; Great Inagua supplies the salt that is the key ingredient in the flamingos' habitat. For me the final satisfying link in the continuum was the presence of Henry Nixon, a large man with a shy smile under his neat mustache. Nixon's father, Sam, and uncle Jimmy were the wardens who convoyed me around the island in their old truck in 1982.

Sam (now dead) and Jimmy (a nonagenarian) became wardens paid by the National Audubon Society in 1952 to protect what was then a rare viable colony of greater flamingos in the West Indies. The two men rode the transition from the long Audubon campaign for flamingo protection (introduced at the meeting to incorporate the National Association of Audubon Societies in New York City in 1905) to the creation of the Bahamas National Trust in 1959. The trust, a self-funded, nongovernmental organization, was established by the Bahamas parliament to oversee the management of the country's nascent national park system.

Audubon's longtime connection with Great Inagua was duly noted some years ago by the creator of Her Majesty's matchless secret servant, 007. Ian Fleming, who traveled widely in the Caribbean, owned a copy of Birds of the West Indies—then the standard regional guide—which was written by James Bond, a prominent ornithologist associated with the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Fleming decided the author's name neatly combined the qualities he was looking for in naming the shadowy hero of his first spy thriller—he found it crisp, masculine, and “the dullest name I ever heard,” and cold-bloodedly filched the ornithologist's identity. In Doctor No, Fleming set the scene on a Caribbean island that allegedly was an Audubon sanctuary. His island's topography, its sights and sounds, and the two wardens with their primitive little camp in the interior smack strongly of National Audubon's real-life project on Great Inagua.

Neither of my visits turned up evidence of foreign fiends, bird-zapping flamethrowers, or almond-eyed hussies. Indeed, the island's parched scrub and wind-twisted trees present a stark visage to outsiders. Great Inagua is 55 miles long, and its western end is stamped with the peculiar desolation produced only by nature and humans working in cahoots. Here the landscape is a vast, disheveled salt flat, strewn with blighted vegetation. Everywhere—rimming the ponds and lagoons, in towering mounds by the little harbor, and overlaying what once had been green trees and shrubs—lies salt. A long concrete dock stretches offshore, and alongside it a ship chartered by Morton Bahamas Ltd. waits to carry the salt to Florida for processing.

The island is Morton's fiefdom. Almost all of Great Inagua's thousand or so residents live in an unprepossessing clump of houses called Matthew Town, and work to produce the million tons of salt the company harvests each year. Sharing the streets with the populace are listless dogs, strutting and sometimes noisy roosters, and, in the trees above, equally noisy Bahama parrots.

Yet one need only go with Nixon in his truck beyond the last smattering of buildings to Morton's 36,000 acres of salt pans and reservoirs to catch the first glimpses of avian glory. Crisscrossed by rough dikes lined with scraggly mangrove and buttonwood trees, the shallow ponds lie simmering under the scorching sun, slowly evaporating and leaving layers of the coveted salt. Although Great Inagua was known as a “salt island” long before Morton Bahamas arrived, the company speeded up the natural process by constructing reservoirs and crystallization ponds to hold salt water pumped in from the sea. Algae grow in this shallow water, darkening it and promoting evaporation. Tiny brine shrimp, feeding on the algae, filter the water and, in turn, attract many kinds of wading birds to feed on them. The birds' droppings further enrich the water, producing more brine shrimp, hastening evaporation. Flamingos rival Morton Bahamas as beneficiaries of the cycle.

Flamingos are found on Inagua year-round but reach their peak numbers—about 60,000—in winter. The pink in their feathers comes from carotenoid pigments in some elements of their diet, especially crustaceans.

Photos courtesy of Bahamas National Trust

In this area the views are eminently theatrical. From the truck we saw thousands of flamingos in the dark, shallow ponds, their fabulous pink plumage intensified by the tropical sun and contrasted against the silvery sheen of salt-killed trees in the background. (“Flamingo” is derived from the Latin word flamma, or flame.) The feeding birds brought to mind a childhood factoid about the flamingo being the only vertebrate that feeds with its head upside down while it is standing right side up. The birds' long necks were thrust beneath the cloudy surface, sweeping rhythmically from side to side as their bills' angled upper mandibles grazed the bottom to filter prey from the salty ooze.

We saw thousands of flamingos in the dark, shallow ponds, their fabulous pink plumage intensified by the tropical sun.

Here and there a restless bird pattered across the water on absurdly long legs, wings flapping hard to gain lift as it rose into the air. Each time one flew close to the dike, Nixon slowed the truck for a better look. A flamingo in flight is a natural wonder, its body pulsing throughout that incredible distance from bill to toes as if in response to recurrent waves of rapture, the wings on its brief lump of torso producing a high, sweet hum like a chorus of small sparrows.

 

The greater flamingo was nearly exterminated from the Caribbean by the 1930s because of its suitability for the pot. Flamingos, especially young ones, are good to eat. Going back to Roman times, gourmets have prized the adults' thick, oily, and reputedly delicious tongue. Nixon loses few birds to poachers, but two flamingos recently shot near Matthew Town were found intact except for missing tongues.

Historically, the species has been rare in the United States. The occasional bird seen in this country usually turns out to be an escapee from a “jungle garden” or other aviary. Throughout the 20th century a succession of Audubon researchers uncovered evidence of a general slaughter by poachers in the heart of the species' population (the Bahamas, Cuba, and other island groups), eliminating the overflow that might have reached our shores. The findings convinced Audubon's board of directors as early as 1905 to petition Bahamian authorities to protect flamingos, and a law was subsequently passed.

But without effective enforcement, the killing went on. Robert Porter Allen, Audubon's research director from 1939 to 1960, finally confirmed rumors of a large colony on Great Inagua in 1952. Sam Nixon led Allen to lakes in the island's almost inaccessible interior, where they found more than a thousand flamingos nesting, or “commulating,” as Nixon called the spectacle. Allen later described courtship rituals, including head turning, wing flicking, and exaggerated strutting, as “the flamingo quadrille.”

In this region the mix of elements has created a landscape hospitable to flamingos. The island's interior is a large depression. Limestone, the underlying rock, is unsubstantial, honeycombed with sinks and caverns through which seawater rises to form shallow lakes; in wet seasons these lakes are swollen by heavy rain. As in the salt pans to the west, the water evaporates in dry seasons, becoming at least twice as saline as the sea and encouraging the growth of the brine shrimp, small fish, and mollusks on which great numbers of herons, egrets, and black-necked stilts feed along with the flamingos.

In this aqueous land, Allen realized, was a breeding population flourishing in isolation and from which long-abandoned flamingo colonies in the Caribbean might one day be replenished. He arranged for Audubon to hire the Nixon brothers as wardens and designed a wilderness camp for them. Conservationists on the country's more populated islands founded an organization that grew into the Bahamas National Trust. Alexander “Sandy” Sprunt IV, who succeeded Allen as research director and became Audubon's liaison with the trust, was a familiar figure in the Bahamas. (It was Sprunt Great Inaguans referred to as “de fillymingo mon.”) Making frequent visits, he monitored the flamingos' comeback. Sprunt's banding program also clarified the flamingos' movements in the Caribbean, with flocks from Great Inagua repopulating Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Young flamingos cannot fly, and receive no parental protection after they're three weeks old.

Although a severe drought has curtailed breeding on Great Inagua during the past four years, Nixon estimated there were 60,000 individuals feeding on the island while I was there in March. Most of the breeding birds have since retreated to Cuba (only 50 miles west of Matthew Town), where the population is estimated to be at least 100,000 adults and young.

 

The challenge now facing Great Inagua is the inevitability of development. The history of ocean islands is that native human populations and their animal neighbors are eclipsed as outsiders appropriate their space for agriculture, industry, and resorts. Development has already come to other islands in the Bahamas, often with dispiriting effect. New Providence Island, site of the young nation's capital, Nassau, reels under the impact of traffic gridlock, polluted air, and loss of open space. Elsewhere, glitzy resorts have been imposed, haphazardly, on small local populations.

“The question is, how do we have natural areas on islands like Great Inagua contribute to the local economy?” Pericles Maillis, a prominent lawyer and past president of the Bahamas National Trust, remarked to me on my stopover in Nassau. “Whatever happens, the people must have a stake in it. But what we've seen in other places is that Bahamians don't retain the tourist dollar. Outsiders come in and rush for the nipple. They build the hotels and resorts and casinos and walk away with the profits.”

On Great Inagua I encountered a delegation from the Inter-American Development Bank, which has been asked by the Bahamian government to consider financial help for the island. (Finding rooms for the half-dozen or so people in the bankers' party, a staff member from the trust, and me put a mild strain on local facilities, sending Henry Nixon scrambling for an extra room!) Traditional tourism is flat throughout the West Indies, with the lion's share now going to Central America. There are concerns about Great Inagua's dependence on a single industry. If its business were to decline and Morton Bahamas were to pull out someday, depopulation would result and, the government fears, so might a flood of illegal immigrants from nearby Haiti to this outpost island.

“We need a plan for Great Inagua, and the theme will be to go carefully,” said Malcolm Martini, who is the national planning coordinator in the office of Prime Minister Perry Christie and who accompanied the bankers' group. “There have been suggestions to make this a regular stop for cruise ships—but there aren't enough bathrooms here! What does a tourist face? A lack of rooms, no signs or lights on the streets, no transportation. As one of our experts pointed out, nobody outside even knows how to spell Inagua. It's just an asterisk on the map of the Bahamas.”

Martini and the bankers want to provide a modest infrastructure for the island. Its assets are manifold, if fragile. There is the national park, covering 287 square miles (almost half the island), with its marvelous birds, unspoiled beaches, extensive coral reefs, and unlimited opportunities for fishing. A steering committee, including representatives from the government and Morton Bahamas, as well as local men and women, is looking to get the island ready for tourism. “Modest loans could be available to provide for mom-and-pop operations,” Martini said. “For restaurants, inns, businesses offering diving, fishing, transportation. The link to a solid corporation like Morton Bahamas is an asset, too. We're not talking about millions—maybe $200,000 to $300,000 for a marketing plan, land-use planning, and a basic infrastructure. What we see is an investment in an incremental, eco-sustainable economy in which everyone is included.”

Salt is the currency of Great Inagua, and each year the island's salt pans and reservoirs produce about a million pounds of it.

How will the flamingos fare in such a scenario? Also on the island during my stay was Lynn Gape, public relations and education officer of the Bahamas National Trust. Working with BirdLife International to identify strongholds of avian abundance, the trust designated Great Inagua an Important Bird Area as part of the global IBA program. To involve local adults and children, Gape organized a bird club (named Sam Nixon). As part of the IBA program, her “study-site group” monitors selected ponds and other bird habitats to record their distribution in the park. “The continuity is here,” Gape said. “Sandy Sprunt was my mentor. On his visits he was unbelievably generous in sharing his knowledge about the birds. I show the children slides of Sandy, Sammy, and Jimmy working with the birds around the lakes. They're all part of the island's history. And of course I couldn't run the study-site program without Henry Nixon's help. Adults are interested, and the children really get it. Some are already very good birders.”

Another resident bird on Great Inagua is the Bahama parrot.

Several times I was asked if I had noticed changes on the island since my earlier visit. Aside from the drought of the past several years and the consequent failure of the flamingos to nest, there were hardly any. The landscape remained like a snapshot, caught in a moment of time; Matthew Town had barely changed. Roadsides looked a bit tidier; newly planted trees and flower beds here and there had replaced household and industrial refuse. Still, I sensed a community holding its breath, waiting for a jolt from outsiders seeking novelty and adventure, which of course would alter local lives in ways no one could yet guess.

Henry Nixon deposited me with my luggage at the small airport, acknowledging my departure with a nod and a quiet smile. Yes, continuity persisted here. Then my plane was in the air, circling ponds where graceful birds were blurring into pink flecks against this unforgiving land.