If it Looks Like a Duck…
Senior Vice President of Global Programs, Paul Butler, celebrates the success of Shelly Cant and her Pride campaign to protect the Pintail Duck in Big Pond, Bahamas. Read how Shelly rallied her community to take Pride in their environment.
Shelly Cant, Pride campaign manager in Big Pond, Bahamas
Shelly Cant, who ran her conservation campaign in the Bahamas, took the stage. She talked about the implementation process of the Pride campaign and gave specific details about her wetlands campaign. Shelley noted that the results of her pre-project questionnaire survey really surprised her.
She found that the people did know about the island’s wetlands and were supportive of greater protection being afforded to them (83 percent); but they did not know “how they could help” or what they could do! Shelly noted that this simple exercise in information-gathering had helped her to define her campaign. Had she gone on the assumption that the public knew little, then time and resources may have been wasted relaying the “knowledge” that people already had; rather than focusing on actions that people could take!
Some of the wetlands that Shelly and her Pride campaign are trying to protect.
The project planning also helped Shelly identify the most significant threats facing the islands’ wetlands – these include irresponsible and unplanned development, illegal dumping, and invasive species. Because dumping is illegal, Shelly found it difficult to identify the “who” that lay behind the threat and therefore target them specifically. She and her agency, the Bahamas National Trust, decided to focus on the communities that live around the wetlands and to foster a sense of Pride for the wetlands that lie on their doorstep. With this, they hoped that the community members would become more active in reporting illegal activities, as well as in activities like clean-up, reforestation, and the removal of invasive species.
The campaign focused on getting these communities to “adopt a wetland,” and used the endemic Bahamas Pintail Duck as its emblematic species. Shelly said, “people seem to find ducks cute, and this species is our own!” By the time of her return to Kent, seven wetlands had been adopted, three corporations had come on board, and the campaign seemed to have taken on a life of its own.
Shelley worked with schools and did puppet shows about the Bahamas Pintail Duck and preserving and protecting the wetlands of the Bahamas.
Because of the Bahamas Pride campaign led by Shelly the community around Big Pond adopted their wetland and have begun cleaning it and replanting vegetation. The next step is to rehabilitate another key wetland site and reconnect it back to the sea, nearly a century after it was enclosed!
