Nature trails

Kelvin Guerrero gamely steers his small pickup truck along a rutted one-lane dirt road, dodging half-buried rocks. Between makeshift fences of barbed wire draped over weathered wooden posts, shrubs, and cacti, he makes his way toward one of the Dominican Republic's environmental jewels - Parque Nacional del Este.

Established in 1975, the park represents "one of the largest tracts of pristine marine and coastal environments in the Caribbean," according to Francisco Geraldes, with the Marine Biology Research Center at the Autonomous University in Santo Domingo.

During the 1990s, the 162-square-mile park off the eastern tip of the republic became a poster child for Parks in Peril. The program is a joint effort by the US Agency for International Development and the nonprofit Nature Conservancy to provide critical support to cash-strapped countries in the Caribbean and Latin America that are trying to set aside new land for parks and reserves - or preserve the ones they have.

Now, however, the park has become a symbol of the challenges confronting Caribbean countries as they try to preserve steps taken in the '90s to safeguard important ecosystems against the pressures of population growth and development. Parque Nacional del Este is facing increasing pressures from tourism, while supporters have had to fend off government attempts to open portions of the park to development.

Yet with government support, local resorts, townspeople, and local and international environmental groups are attempting to map a fresh strategy for preserving the park. The conservation plan, which they hope to complete this month, is designed to focus the country's meager resources on preserving and rebuilding the habitats and species that face the greatest threats.

The park's value lies as much in its role as a nursery for marine and landlubber wildlife as in its abundant biodiversity, notes Francisco Núñez, with the Nature Conservancy's office in Santo Domingo.

The park's forests are important as breeding and wintering grounds for a range of migratory and endemic birds. Of the country's 303 bird species, slightly more than one-third breed or mature in Parque Nacional del Este. This has made it a popular destination for bird-watchers, who, in January, included First Bird-Watcher Jimmy Carter. Guerrero, who headed the Carter family's expedition into the park, notes the former president logged his 1,000th species on the trip.

Along the coastline, extensive beaches, reefs, and mangrove swamps provide a similar nursing ground for marine life. "There are not many places like this in the Caribbean," he says.

Yet from a conservation standpoint, "the most critical areas are the marine areas," says Guerrero during a break in a hike up the coral-limestone bluffs that form the eastern edge of the park.

Many of the park's archeological sites attest to how far the area's ecosystem has fallen, Dr. Sealey adds. Based on excavations uncovering Taino Indian waste pits dating back 600 years, "there were lots of turtles, manatees, monk seals, and large sharks," she says. Today, many of these species are endangered. Others have vanished, some as recently as 1996. That year, the World Conservation Union declared the Caribbean monk seal extinct.

"Historically, we've had 200 conch per hectare" offshore, Sealey says, referring to a shellfish prized for its meat as well as its shell. "Now, we have 0.04 conch per hectare. We're talking about order-of-magnitude losses."

As they weigh options for preserving the park, participants face one of the toughest issues in any attempt to restore critical habitats: How much conservation - which can bring with it restrictions on fishing, boating, and other park uses - is enough?

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