by Larry Smith
On a crisp winter morning recently, three birdmen were making their way carefully through the virgin pine forest on remote Little Abaco when they came across an amazing find.
Tony White and Bruce Hallett, who have both published authoritative field guides on Bahamian widlife, were joined for the early morning hike by Elwood Bracey, a retired Marsh Harbour doctor who is an ardent amateur ornithologist.
All three are longtime members of the Bahamas National Trust and Abaco Friends of the Environment. They were horrified at what greeted them in the forest less than a mile from historic 19th century ruins and half a mile from a pristine blue hole.
Unlike the rest of the Bahamian pinelands, this piece of forest on Little Abaco has never been cut. In fact, it is considered the only virgin stand of Caribbean pine in the entire region - about 4,000 acres in all, providing good habitat for warblers, woodpeckers, ducks, kingbirds, pewees, swallows and other widllife.
What the birdmen stumbled upon that morning were two huge clearings, with a big D-8 dozer noisily mining fill from one of them. Acres of virgin forest had been totally demolished in just a few hours to make way for the North Abaco waste transfer facility - although there was an existing dump only a mile or so away.
"What are we doing using the most unspoiled land for garbage when there's an existing dumpsite nearby?" Dr Bracey asked incredulously.
