Philipsburg, St. Maarten: Yesterday, May 22, 2023, marked International Day for Biodiversity. The theme for 2023 is “From agreement to action: build back biodiversity”, as the entire world recognized this day and delivered the message of conserving their biodiversity.
Saint Maarten has lost many of its habitats to development, the island has 19 ponds up to the 1960s, and now only five have left. The people of Saint Maarten must start to build back Saint Martin’s biodiversity by managing their natural resources responsibly, both collectively and individually, and by establishing Saint Martin’s first land-based and wetland-protected areas.
Saint Maarten features various natural habitats, including Dry Forest, Scrubland, Mangroves (along the shores of ponds and lagoons), and other coastal areas such as Beaches, Rocky shorelines, Coastal Forest and Coral Reefs. In these habitats live a vast range of plants and animals.
The Hill Tops and higher Hillsides of Cul de Sac, Cole Bay, and Dutch Quarter are the last bastions of Saint Martin’s Dry Forests. This is where an individual can find some of the island’s tallest trees, orchids, bromeliads, Birds, Bats, our native lizards, spiders and many insects.
In addition to these ecological aspects, many of the remaining dry rock walls (Slave walls) were built by ancestors, both before and after slavery, for a variety of reasons, including clearing the property of rocks, separating areas used for growing crops from those used for raising livestock, to mark boundaries, separate properties and mark the border between North and South are found here. Some of these walls are easily hundreds of years old.
Saint Maarten’s span lagoons, beaches and colourful streets make this country one of the most visited places in the Caribbean. Tourism is the backbone of the country’s economy, but it also harms biodiversity.
Tourism significantly impacts local land use, resulting in soil erosion, increased pollution, the loss of natural habitats, and tremendous stress on endangered species. These impacts may eventually destroy the environmental resources that tourism itself depends on.
