Land. A forest that grows almost nowhere else.
The northern islands carry the Bahamian pine, Pinus caribaea var. bahamensis, a subspecies that grows on Grand Bahama, Abaco, Andros and New Providence and nowhere else on Earth. It is a fire forest. The trunks are built to come through a ground fire that clears the thatch palm and palmetto beneath them, and without that fire the understory closes over and the seedlings never reach the light they need.
Much of it was cut in the last century and came back as even-aged stands. Then Dorian flattened three quarters of Grand Bahama's forest in 2019, and the salt water pushed inland by the surge killed pine outright, well beyond the reach of the wind. Ground like that does not simply grow back. Our first land work replants cleared and storm-battered stands, clears the invasive growth choking what remains, and restores the fire the forest was built around.
Fire is not an enemy here, it is a requirement. Left unburned for too long, the understory thickens with hardwood and thatch palm until the fire that eventually comes through burns hot enough to kill the pine outright, instead of simply clearing beneath it the way a cooler ground fire would. Prescribed burns on a real schedule are as much a part of this work as planting seedlings is.
This forest holds species that live nowhere else in it. On Abaco, the Bahama parrot nests nowhere above ground: it digs into limestone solution holes in the pine rockland floor, the only Amazon parrot in the world that nests underground, which makes it exactly as vulnerable as the forest floor it depends on.
77% of Grand Bahama's forest damaged, 2019 / Bahamas Forestry Unit
- of Grand Bahama's forest damaged in 2019
77%
of Grand Bahama's forest damaged in 2019
Bahamas Forestry Unit
- Bahama Warblers remaining after Dorian
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Bahama Warblers remaining after Dorian
Bahamas National Trust
What we are doing here.
Restore
Replant native Caribbean pine and mangrove where storms and clearing have stripped the land bare, starting with the ground that recovers slowest on its own. Putting seedlings in is the easy half. The harder half is the years of weeding, thinning and fire management that decide whether a seedling ever becomes a tree.
Protect
Work alongside the government and the Bahamas National Trust to keep the most irreplaceable habitat off-limits to development for good. A line on a map is worth only the wardens, boats and surveys behind it, so we fund the holding of a protected area as well as the drawing of it.
