Our Continental Island

Faraaz Abdool considers Trinidad’s connections to South America As a child, I spent considerable time walking the trail around the pond at the Pointe-a-Pierre Wildfowl Trust. While there, Molly Gaskin, founder and president of the Wildfowl Trust, would impress upon the audience the importance of linkages in the natural world. As the years rolled past, I never forgot her words. In fact, once I began to immerse myself in the wild spaces of our islands and beyond, these linkages only became more apparent. Everything is indeed tied to something else in an elaborate, self-sustaining and incomprehensibly vast web. Globe-spanning currents of water and air distribute life-giving nutrients. Saharan dust helps to fertilise soil in the Amazon rainforest, which in turn helps to keep ice intact in polar regions. Countless animals migrate using the earth’s magnetic field as guidance, tubers that lie dormant for months know exactly when to send their green shoot...