Kai Wulf

My name is Kai Wulf, and I'm the parks manager of the Saba Conservation Foundation since 2009. The Saba Conservation Foundation is a non-governmental, nonprofit organization in charge of managing nature on Saba, specifically the Saba Marine Park. That's what we started off with, which encompasses the entire island down to depths of 60 meters. And then in 2011, the Saba Bank was added, which is a submerged atoll. It's an area of 2,400 square kilometers — much larger than the original marine park. And since 2018, we also manage Mount Scenery National Park. All of them have now received national park status.

I’d actually been coming here already since 1995, and the initial idea was to copy existing strategies or management plans that we could implement on other islands, because Saba was doing an excellent job of conserving the nature, and that goes back over centuries since the locals also did a fairly good job. So that was the initial mission of Saba Conservation Foundation.

Initially, which was interesting, people here thought, “This is an exceptional place in the world with almost pristine nature, so we need to conserve the status quo.” However, that has changed over the years, and our mission has changed over the years. So we are not just about keeping things as are; we really have to look and find ways to restore and protect better. For example, we have to put in measures that restrict people from fishing specific species like big snappers and groupers. So it's not just about keeping things as is, but we are already in the stage now where we have to find ways we can best restore certain habitats — coral reefs, in particular, but also the fisheries.

In terms of terrestrial challenges, they are a bit different because there we deal mostly with invasive species — specifically feral cats, but also rats, which have tremendous impact on local native species, like the red-bellied racer, for example, which is an endemic species only found here on Saba and on Stasia. In addition to that, of course, now we have climate change. You can see even here on Saba that there are already changes — that it's getting a little warmer.

We rely entirely on science — we entirely base our management plans, our species management plans, on the advice we get from scientists. So usually first what we do is that we establish inventories, and then look at the challenges. And then based on the results, on the data we receive and the analysis, we adjust our strategies — our five-year strategic plan, for example. So every five years we come together, we develop those strategic plans for the organization, and the strategic plans are heavily influenced by science and by the data we receive.

That’s also for the Saba Bank, which is mainly a fisheries resource — a very important economic resource to the island. So based on the data we collect there, we can tell the fishermen, “We think it will be better if you put in a season, that you stop fishing for lobsters in the season where there is not that much tourism on our neighboring islands.” Or that they close their red-fish fisheries altogether for a year. That's a specific example for the Saba Bank. We had similar instances or examples for the marine park as well, where we felt that the grouper was heavily targeted, and based on that, there is now a stipulation that you need a recreational permit if you want to fish around the island. There is no commercial fishing allowed. But based on that, we banned all fish traps around the island. So you're not allowed to pass those traps in the water any longer. Those are very specific examples, you know, of how science really impacts how we approach management of the natural resources we’re in charge of.

As much as we think we know everything about the island, it’s actually not true. There’s the good example of Sea & Learn, which shows that visiting experts come here say, “Oh, we think that you have at least five or six different ant species,” and the people say, “What? We only see one.” So it's really important that we first of all know what is there before we can actually put action into place, or also tell the local populations about the importance of the environment and how important it is that they play their part in protecting the environment. So that all fits in together.