Fifty-six square kilometres of mangrove and marsh on the west coast of Trinidad, the country’s largest mangrove forest and second largest wetland. Go in the late afternoon by boat and wait. Every evening the scarlet ibis come back from feeding grounds around eleven miles away in Venezuela and settle into the mangroves in numbers, and the trees turn red. The birds are that colour because of the crustaceans they eat. Over 100 bird species use the swamp, along with silky anteaters and crab-eating raccoons. It was made a Ramsar wetland of international importance on 8 July 2005. Pollution, illegal hunting and unlicensed oyster harvesting are the pressures on it now.
Caroni, Trinidad and Tobago
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