"Turtle - Friendly Lighting Workshop"

FYI received from msanabria@chahotels.com

Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION

CONTACT : Mabel Sanabria
                787-725-9139
                msanabria@chahotels.com

CAST Collaborates Actively in First
"Turtle - Friendly Lighting Workshop"

A "Sea Turtles and Beachfront Lighting Workshop", the first of its kind
in the Caribbean, will be held October 13th at the Glitter Bay Fairmont
Hotel in Barbados, to address the dangers for sea turtles posed by
artificial shore-based lighting. The Workshop will particularly
emphasize the technologies that are now available to solve the problem
of light pollution on beaches where turtles nest.

This interactive workshop is sponsored by the Tourism Development
Corporation, Glitter Bay Fairmont Hotel and UNEP (CEP). Co-hosted by the
Barbados Sea Turtle Project (BSTP) and the Wider Caribbean Sea Turtle
Conservation Network (WIDECAST) in collaboration with the Caribbean
Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (CAST) and the Barbados Hotel and
Tourism Association (BHTA), the Workshop will provide participants from
the commercial, Governmental and non-governmental sectors the tools
necessary to evaluate and minimize the beachfront lighting problem in
Barbados. Expert presentations, technical materials, manufacturers'
displays, and interactive sessions will be available to facilitate the
information flow.

Exactly what is the interaction between sea turtles and lighting?
Hotels use beachfront lighting primarily to ensure the safety and
security of their guests, as well as for aesthetic purposes. However,
despite being marine animals, sea turtles must return to the land in
order to lay their eggs, and it is to the same narrow strips of beach
sand where people live, play, and conduct commerce that sea turtles come
to reproduce. Although sea turtles spend very little of their lives on
land, their activities there are critical to the creation of the next
generation. The concentration of human activity on and adjacent to
beaches in Barbados, particularly as a result of tourism development,
has caused profound environmental changes that pose severe threats to
the sea turtle population's long-term survival. Night-emerging
hatchlings rely on natural light as a cue to locate the sea, and are
attracted away from the sea by artificial lights. In Barbados,
hatchlings from the majority of hawksbill nests laid, are disoriented by
lights. If there were no human intervention, these hatchlings would
succumb to attacks by predators, exhaustion, desiccation, or strikes by
vehicles on nearby roads and parking lots. Indeed, from a conservation
perspective, there is little point in protecting turtles from the pot if
the adverse effects of human activities on the nesting beaches are not
addressed.

CAST, a subsidiary of the Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA), plays a
role in collaborating with the workshop. This is due to the fact that
CAST's function is to support Caribbean hoteliers in effective
management of their environmental resources and to market the Caribbean
as a world leader in the sustainable tourism effort. CAST has worked to
bring sustainable tourism awareness to the forefront of every agenda in
the private and public sectors, and has achieved much success in these
endeavors. Through projects, training, research and advocacy, CAST has
become a vital component to meeting the standards set forth by Agenda
21, a blueprint for securing the sustainable future of the planet into
the 21st century.

"We are very pleased with the response to the workshop, and with the
high caliber of experts we've attracted", stated Dr. Julia Horrocks,
Director of the Barbados Sea Turtle Project in the Department of
Biological and Chemical Sciences at the University of the West Indies
(UWI). Among the speakers is Dr. Blair Witherington, of the Florida
Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Witherington is author of a
book on the problem of beachfront lighting for sea turtles and will be
giving the keynote address. His book will be provided free of charge to
all participants.

The workshop is the first of a series of Light Management Workshops
convened under the auspices of WIDECAST in the Wider Caribbean Region to
implement recommendations made in national "Sea Turtle Recovery Action
Plans", and developed by regional experts and published by UNEP. The
recommended audiences for the Workshops are managers and owners
(hoteliers, restauranteurs), local engineers and architects, the
Barbados Light & Power Company, policy-makers (e.g., Town and Country
Planning, Coastal Zone Unit), manufacturers, and NGOs. A maximum of 50
participants will be allowed, and organizers hope the workshop sets an
important example for other countries to follow.

For more information on the Workshop, you may contact Dr. Julia Horrocks
at: (246) 417-4320, or Alyssa Johnson from CAST, at: (787) 725-9139,
ext. 250, or ajohnson@chahotels.com.

MS
Received on Sat Oct 7 16:11:59 2000