Profile: Lynn Gape

Mon, Apr 23rd 2012, 08:49 AM

After a dirty and tough morning of pulling cattails out of the mud at a national park, Lynn Gape, deputy executive director of the Bahamas National Trust (BNT), beamed at the work.
For Gape, however, it is a small victory. The thousands of cattails, a native plant to wetlands that grow up to 10 feet tall, have become invasive at the Harold and Wilson Ponds National Park, destroying it in effect.
"We have an ecosystem that is out of balance," she said on Saturday.
However, Gape will be the first to admit that Saturday's event was more about conservation education.
"We had the young men who work at Starbucks in the mud, pulling up cattails and I say to one of them, 'now you see what a national park warden does'," said Gape.
"And he looked up at me and said, 'well you got that right, I thought all wardens did was keep people out of national parks.'"
Harold and Wilson Ponds is one of 39 Important Bird Areas (IBA) in The Bahamas said Gape, so protecting the species there is very important.
The BNT, a nonprofit organization, was established in 1959 and it is mandated with the conservation of natural and historic resources of The Bahamas.
Starbucks partnered with the BNT to offer assistance at the park.
Gape, a former educator, has been a part of the BNT for over 25 years. She taught at St. Augustine's College for 10 years before moving into the private sector and then eventually volunteering for the BNT in 1985.
"I was the honorary secretary, chair of the education committee," she explained.
"I got involved in the work and there was an opening for an education officer, and in 1991, I become an employee with the national trust."
"It was wonderful to become an employee. In 1991, we embarked upon the Bahama Parrot conservation campaign with the Rare Pride organization and I worked with a wonderful colleague Monique Sweeting and Susan Larson to raise awareness about the Bahama Parrot.
"Our end goal of course was to create a national park in Abaco to protect the northern breeding grounds of the Bahama Parrot."
Gape explained that the campaign immersed her and taught here a lot about conservation education.
It was during this period that she met and worked with various regional conservational experts who taught her a lot about preserving and studying wetlands.
"I was able to take the lessons that were learned in the Rare Pride campaign that we had for the parrot and basically transfer them to other educational endeavors that the trust was doing," Gape said.
The trust also partnered with the Society for the Conservation and Study for Caribbean Birds to write a wetland resource.
The resource incorporated a lot of the ideas that the trust learned with Rare Pride, resulting in a regional wetland's resource used all over the Caribbean said Gape.
"I feel really great because we did a lot of the work here in The Bahamas," she said.
"We worked with Bahamian educators to try out the lessons and the lesson plans in the resource.
"The resource has gone into its third printing. It's been printed in Spanish, French, so it's been truly rewarding for me to work in conservation education and to be able to help provide resources for Bahamian educators.
"One of the frustrating things when I was teaching was I would want resources that were more relevant to The Bahamas and I would be able to find wetland resources that talked about wetlands in Canada but I couldn't find resources that talked about wetlands in The Bahamas."
For Gape it was a personal victory.
"For me during my career as education officer and director of education for the BNT that was always one of my goals, which was to provide resources for teachers that not only would be able to educate their students but would help them in an area where they did not feel so comfortable and also get them out in the environment," said Gape.
Over 20 years later, Gape said one of her first goals, which is to begin to have a national park in Abaco is on course to happen.
While Abaco's national park has been declared, it does not have the infrastructure to allow visitors to experience what the park has to offer.
Gape explained that the BNT is working to put together a concept plan and begin to put in the infrastructure in the Abaco National Park.
"That's going to be really rewarding for me because I got to work on getting the park declared," beamed Gape.
"We just finished our concept plan and on May 5, we are going to do a volunteer work day to begin to put in some trails and a picnic area."
One of the most interesting things about the park said Gape would be it's unique design.
"That was an area that was heavily logged, so you already have logging roads in the area," she said.
"Working with a group called Wilderness Graphics in Tallahassee, Florida, we have come up with a unique idea for having a park that you are going to be able to drive through."
It's a first for national parks she said.
"It's very exciting and I would feel very complete if we open a visitor's center in the Abaco National Park."
Anyone wishing to offer assistance to the BNT can call 393-1317.

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