La Tortuga: Chronicle of an announced ecodisaster?

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With the global environmental crisis we are experiencing, in La Tortuga Island it is intended, "apparently" without the necessary environmental impact studies, to exploit, as soon as possible, "ecotourism and sustainably", the pristine natural and scenic resources of the island and its keys, namely: marine and underwater habitats, lagoons, and salt flats, archaeological and paleoanthropological sites, endemic terrestrial and aquatic biota.

With the global environmental crisis we are experiencing, in La Tortuga Island it is intended, "apparently" without the necessary environmental impact studies, to exploit, as soon as possible, "ecotourism and sustainably", the pristine natural and scenic resources of the island and its keys, namely: marine and underwater habitats, lagoons, and salt flats, archaeological and paleoanthropological sites, endemic terrestrial and aquatic biota.

Without adequate ecological research, the irreversible environmental damage that could be generated will lead us, inexorably, to acquire an irresponsible and unpayable ecological debt. As if this were not enough, we are dumbfounded by the silence of the Venezuelan authorities on environmental issues.

We have already had a bitter experience with the indolent destruction of Plio-Pleistocene fossiliferous marl, when an attempt was made to build a penetration road that would cross the island from south to north, and which was stopped in its tracks by President Hugo Chávez, as a result of the denunciations made at that time (2007) by Fundación La Tortuga; damage that has still not been repaired, in spite of the fact that MINAMB urged and supposedly fined MINTUR for authorizing the work without the pertinent environmental studies.

Certainly, since December 2004, when the Executive Branch first considered the possibility of developing La Tortuga Island for tourism, until September 2007, when the intention to develop the island on property was officially published in a gazette (GON° 38. 775, dated September 24, 2007), several press releases and interventions in the National Assembly, promoted by Fundación La Tortuga, based on bioecological studies by scientists from different Venezuelan universities, studies that were endorsed by the official governing body for science and technology (National Science and Technology Fund), which recommended the need for longer-term research to assess the impacts of tourism development on the island. In fact, several of these investigations, also sponsored by La Tortuga Foundation, were published in scientific journals and/or presented at national and international congresses.

Before the gazetted resolution, two detailed reports had been sent to the National Assembly and ministerial entities, one: Physical and Natural Characterization of the South Zone of the La Tortuga Island Federal Dependency, and the other, Proposal for a Zoning Change in the Management Plan and Regulations for the Use of the theturtlefoundation Utility and Tourist Interest Zones, Federal Dependencies: La Tortuga Island, Los Tortuguillos, Herradura and Los Palanquines keys. We never got an answer. However, the haste with which they now want to intervene La Tortuga Island, and also La Blanquilla, without consulting the scientific-educational, audiovisual, and written material compiled by La Tortuga Foundation during more than seven years of research and debris removal campaigns, leads us to presume that the imminent tourist exploitation of the island will not have an environmentally adequate end.

Although the scientific information that has been collected through the development of the different projects in the Federal Unit at La Tortuga Island is unobjectionably relevant, it is still scarce, and the availability of researchers willing to work in extreme conditions in an island environment of high scenic, scientific and educational value should be taken advantage of.

Finally, the environmental degradation of La Tortuga Island Federal Unit and its keys is evident; however, it is one of the few moderately impacted natural insular spaces still remaining in Venezuela, and a strategic point for the conservation of the marine-insular biological diversity and the food security of the nation, since its interaction with the Cariaco Trench forms a biodiverse whole, pillar of the fisheries of the entire Venezuelan northeast. It is our duty to preserve it for the benefit of current and future generations, which is why we advocate, repeatedly, for the creation of a legal figure of protection that regulates its management. It is a decision that cannot be postponed.

It is worth mentioning here that Jorge Garcia, a visitor to the island for more than 38 years, sentenced: "the archaeologists of the future will not be necessary on an island of garbage generated by humans, surrounded by a dead sea, where the density of plastic in the water and land, exceeds the density of living species and soon the density of the water itself".