Bahamas National Trust
Non-profit managing 32 national parks in the Bahamas.
The Bahamas National Trust, a non-profit, oversees the nation’s 32 national parks. Its headquarters are on East Bay Street in Nassau, inside the Island Traders Building Suites. Founded by a 1959 Act of Parliament, the trust resulted from the work of two conservationist groups.
Quick Facts
- Abbreviation
- BNT
- Formation
- 1959
- Location
- Island Traders Building
- East Bay Street
- Nassau, Bahamas
Facts from the source article.
History
In the early 20th century, concern for the Caribbean flamingo's survival led the National Audubon Society of the United States to urge the Bahamas government to protect the birds, resulting in the Wildbirds (Protection) Act of 1905. In the early 1950s, Audubon expert Robert Porter Allen searched the Caribbean for flamingos and, in his book On the Trail of Vanishing Birds, reported that colonies on Andros had vanished. He found the largest surviving group in the isolated back-waters of Lake Rosa on Inagua. Allen and the Audubon Society recruited influential backers in Nassau to form a Society for the Protection of the Flamingo, led by Arthur Vernay. Two wardens, brothers Samuel and James Nixon, were hired on Inagua, with Audubon financing the operation. Meanwhile, explorer Ilia Tolstoy, a grandson of the Russian writer and a frequent Bahamas visitor, lobbied the colonial government to set aside islands as protected areas. In 1957, the government temporarily reserved a 22-mile stretch of the Exuma cays, pending exploration and recommendations. Carleton Ray, a Columbia University graduate who wrote The Underwater Guide to Marine Life, teamed with Tolstoy for a January 1958 expedition to the Exuma cays. The team included Allen, Donald Squires of the American Museum of Natural History, and Bahamian experts Oris Russell and Herbert McKinney. Their week-long boat trip from Norman's Cay to Conch Cut led to the creation of the world's first land and sea park in the Exumas and to the formation of the Bahamas National Trust.
List of national parks in the Bahamas
The Bahamas national park system protects unique features, critical habitats, and endangered species. Highlights include the world's largest breeding colony of Caribbean flamingos, miles of underwater cave systems, and the first no-take marine reserves in the wider Caribbean. Parks include Abaco National Park, Blue Holes National Park, Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, Inagua National Park, Lucayan National Park, and many others across Abaco, Andros, Conception Island, Crooked Island, Eleuthera, Exuma, Grand Bahama, Inagua, and New Providence.
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