Birdwatching holiday in Jamaica

Our birdwatching tour is run from our eco hotel in Jamaica. We believe that every enterprise has an obligation to protect the environment and to offer something of tangible benefit to the community, and have taken a formal approach to ensure that good environmental practices are identified and monitored through our accreditation with Green Globe 21.

Benefiting the local community: Development should support the rural economy and seek a wide spread to ensure economic and other benefits for the host community. Our hotel favours homegrown produce and uses only local, seasonal produce. We seek to provide secure, stable and meaningful employment for people of our community. For the birdwatching tours, we use a local transportation company & local guides. At our hotel we foster good communications with the local community in order to be a good neighbour and help improve the local environment.  We encourage regular interaction with environmental organisations and the tourism industry and have lobbied against developments which would impact negatively on the environment. Most of the birdwatching is conducted on public lands and not parks - our focus is to impress upon the local population the value of preserving the habitat and not destroying all the forests.

Conservation and the environment: Our hotel seeks to preserve its natural surroundings in order to maintain the habitat of native flora and fauna. We seek to reduce energy consumption and natural resources by careful housekeeping and state-of-art technology.

We promote waste avoidance and minimise, re-use and recycle waste, use recycled items wherever possible, and dispose of waste through safe and responsible methods. We use naturally based, close-to-source products, avoiding those that are scarce or under threat and do not buy individually packaged, single use, disposable items.

For picnics on the birdwatching tours, we provide beverages in thermoses and re-useable plastic picnic plates and cutlery, pack the food in re-usable containers and also provide cloth napkins - so other than compostable egg shells from boiled eggs and fruit skins (bananas and papayas) there is no waste. Our guides are trained park rangers from the local national parks so they are fully aware of the necessary care that must be taken and can advise guests about the environmental do's and don't's while birding.

We have extensive guidelines about waste and waste seperation in the hotel for all guests and advise our guests in the travel tips section of our website not to purchase and bring plastic bottles to the hotels -and upon check in and in the hotel information folders then request our guests to take any plastic waste back with them if they do bring anything.

All photographs copyright Mike Read.