Grenada prepares to sell Hog Island for development

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The government of Grenada has lifted the protected status of its national parks in preparation for selling much of Hog Island, a refuge for the endangered Grenada Dove, to a resort developer.

The Mount Hartman-Hog Island preserve on the little-developed island off Grenada’s rugged southern coast is home to at least a third of the estimated 120 native doves surviving in the world now, and environmentalists fear the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts construction will destroy the birds’ habitat.

Grenadian officials have argued the five-star resort at Mount Hartman harbor, wildly popular with the yachting set, will boost Grenada’s attractiveness to well-heeled tourists and create new jobs in an economy still reeling from the widespread destruction of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.

Opponents of the project, including Pastor Stanford Simon of St. George’s Baptist Church, have been fighting the development on the grounds that the national parks and preserves are entrusted to future generations and should not be sold for commercial benefit.

Despite assurances two months ago from the Ministry of Health, Social Security and the Environment that the government had no plans to abandon the dove sanctuary, Prime Minister Keith Mitchell’s government this week signed off on Parliament’s amendment of the Grenada National Parks and Protected Areas Act to allow the sale of parkland.

Mitchell’s government has ordered an environmental impact assessment on the project and Four Seasons said it planned to leave migratory corridors undeveloped to a 150-acre dove sanctuary inland. But opponents report that land clearing has already begun in preparation for building.

Posted by Carol J. Williams in Miami