  Back in one of my favorite parts of the world, there seems to be the classic struggle between modernization and the protection of natural resources. Seems Guanaja, the next island over from Roatan in Honduras' Islas de la Bahia, is looking to build a road to better serve the growing needs of tourists. This road just happens to run smack through the land where Susan Hendrickson, a renown fossil hunter, decided to settle and eventually build a nature park. The Trib did a great, detailed write up in their story urlLink Fossil hunter has bone to pick with island road .
If you don't recognize the name, you'd recognize her discovery if you've ever been to Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. She's the scientist who discovered the most complete set of T-Rex bones ever found, later named Sue in Hendricksons' honor. While I've never been to Guanaja, it sounds as though they are having the same problems that Roatan had, especially after Hurricane Mitch came through in '98. While the locals got lumber to rebuild their stilted houses in the bays and lagoons and some really ugly paint to finish them off, the couple of rich locals (who'd become rich while illegally fishing and shrimping) were able to get funds to build huge mansions on prime land, never formally owned by anyone but assumed to belong to locals. These few Hondurans on Roatan are connected to the vast majority of the income on the island from both tourism and the fishing trades.
The second time I was in Roatan, we ended up at the chamber at Anthony's Key Resort (long story, but we all knew she wasn't bent, though she insisted she was, so we took her there). Getting treatment was a lobster worker who was seriously bent and paralyzed from the waist down. He was down at 160ft, being shuttled tank after tank after tank while harvesting lobsters for which he would be paid $0.25 each, when he turned around to find his tank empty and no replacement. Shooting to the surface after hours at that depth, there was no way for his tissue to off-gas all that nitrogen, and one particular bubble in his spinal cord knocked out communications to his lower limbs. This wasn't the first time he was bent, nor would it likely be the last -- See, you don't need your legs for that type of diving, so he would be back to work as soon as his treatments were over.
While Hendrickson might be right in her opposition to the road, she has one key strike against her: she's white. It seems that the locals have no problem working for the locals when they treat them or the environment badly, but have quite the reaction to certain caucasians coming in and making money, even if it isn't as clearly at their expense as what the rich locals do. In my opinion, she should try to work with the people of Guanaja instead of simply opposing their progress.
It's in everyone's best interest to keep the island and reef as pristine as it is, and if she can get that message across and work together to keep it that way, she will have done a great thing. It is their island, and to deny them their first road is to subjugate them, a role they are all too familiar with. urlLink Read more! 
