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(CNS): Premier and Minister of Sustainability and Climate Resiliency Wayne Panton, who has officially endorsed the community-led nomination for Little Cayman to become a UNESCO World Heritage site, described the island as a national treasure. Thanking everyone involved in the bid, the premier said the existing protections on the island had helped in getting the island onto the UK’s nomination list.
In 2021, following many years of research and public consultation, the Cayman Islands
expanded its Marine Protected Areas around all three Cayman Islands to take account of
current and emerging threats to the country’s marine resources. Little Cayman now has 74.2% of its shallow shelf protected, from the water’s edge to 45 metres deep.
The protected areas also include the marine-associated coastal ponds, the Booby Pond Nature Reserve and Rookery RAMSAR site, the East Interior and the unique Tarpon Lake ecosystem.
“Visitors to Little Cayman, the smallest and most undeveloped of our three islands, often
remark that arriving on its pristine shores is like stepping back in time,” Paton said this week as he commented on the successful effort to have Little Cayman nominated for the prestigious status. “Birdwatchers visit the hemisphere’s largest breeding populations of red-footed boobies at the Booby Pond Nature Reserve and Rookery RAMSAR site, while divers and snorkelers admire coral reefs teeming with life.”
Panton said that Little Cayman holds special significance for him personally and he was proud of the part the government, the ministry and colleagues in the Department of Environment have played in establishing and managing these marine protected areas that qualify Little Cayman’s extraordinary Marine Protected Areas for consideration for World Heritage Status.
“Ensuring the continued protection of the coral reefs, marine-associated coastal ponds and other marine ecosystems around Little Cayman benefit all who call the Cayman Islands home and those who travel from around the world to visit our country,” the premier said.
“I would like to thank the community of Little Cayman, particularly Peter Hillenbrand who championed this nomination, as well as the UK Government and the World Heritage Committee for their strong consideration of this application for World Heritage status for Little Cayman’s Marine Protected Areas, which I fully support.”
Panton added, “Having our Marine Protected Areas in Little Cayman ratified through international recognition as prestigious as a World Heritage designation, even on the Tentative List, is something everyone in the Cayman Islands can be extremely proud of. Little Cayman is a national treasure that will only continue to thrive under such a positive international spotlight, particularly as it identifies conservation of sites with special significance to all of humanity.”
From a tourism perspective, the process will increase the profile of Little Cayman and attract more visitors, especially divers. But securing the UNESCO tag will secure the island’s future free of inappropriate development.
DoE Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie reflected on how Cayman’s Marine Protected Areas laid the foundations for current and future conservation efforts and the role local people played in securing them.
“The UNESCO announcement highlights decades of conservation work across all three of our islands,” she said. “Marine Protected Areas were first explored in the mid-eighties because fishers noticed changes in their catch, so it’s really the public who initiated and helped steer the original protections into what we have today.
“It is only with the public’s support of conservation measures, and the care and respect shown for all of nature, that Cayman’s unique species and ecosystems may continue to flourish,” she added.
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