Port Royal National Park
The Port Royal National Park was declared in 1978 as a wildlife refuge by the Municipality of Santos Guardiola and it wasn’t until 2010 along with other protected areas of the Bay Islands that it was declared as a National Park.
My name is Irma Brady I work for the Bay Islands Conservation Association BICA as the Executive Director.
Since it’s in the high section of the Island you can see outstanding views.
Oh, the best part of the park is very good days it never gets hot, winds from the south and winds from the north, my name is Don Larry Matute and I am from Camp Bay. I work for the national park in Porth Royal.
On a clear day you can see Morat you can see Barbareta as well as the mountains of Guanaja and of course the Bay of Port Royal and if you look to the northwest, you can Picacho which is the highest hill in that area. The park is surrounded by four communities which are dependent of the watershed areas to feed their wells.
It’s very important that the communities have a watershed and I think the park is a big help to that, my name is Laura Bodden and I live in Diamond Rock.
The interesting thing about the park is that in that area is the only section of the island where you can find the Pinos Caribea.
When you come to the Santos Guardiola or the National Park you are going to find the pine trees and that’s a beautiful thing to see because when you come to the west part of the Island you don’t see much, but pine trees, my name is Jorge Avila and I am here working as a tour guide.
There’s a section of the park where the wind comes through very strong so in that section is very interesting to see the form of the pine’s trees that because of the prevalent east wind they are bent over some and because of that feature they really don’t grow that tall, that is pretty much not common even in Honduras, it’s the habitat for the Yellow Nape Parrot.
We had Yellow Nape Amazon or the Amazona Auropalliata, that’s the resident bird that we have on this area.
The Yellow Nape Parrot is the park’s mascot, he’s the one that is on the signs gives the different messages as well as our new educational manual that we haven’t released yet to the school, he is the emblematic figure that talks about the wildlife and the need for protection.
They are so beautiful, and they are not too well protected because people find their nesting and they take the young one from them.
We would like to take the opportunity to ask people that have been buying the Yellow Napes or any other bird for that matter, that the pets that they have to take of them but in the future, please do not buy no more Yellow Nape because they are really depleting the wildlife population in the park and really these animals need to be appreciated wild and free.
If you come to the park, you will see them flying wild.
We need to learn to appreciate wildlife and its habitat not in a cage.
Bridwatching in Honduras is one of the new things to do so how do we do this; we love to bring people to walk in the trails in the morning. We take a quiet time to walk around the trails if we can listen to some birds that are around the area.
To Birdwatch in Roatan we use binoculars, we also use a scope this is also two of the things we use to do bridwatching and a field book – guidebook is important for us so we can identify all the species that are visiting the island in the migration time.
Unfortunately, the park is not free of threats one of the problems that we’ve been having is fires that start in neighboring properties and then because of the wind they end up encroaching into the park.
It’s a big problem right not too much to do because well you never see the people that we’re doing it you want to see it when the fire started.
That effects the watershed it’s affect the wildlife its effect the forest cover so we to be more careful with that. The Port Royal National Park is one of the most important assets that we have here on the island, it has endemic flora fauna it gives all of us multiple benefits and there’s many ways that everybody can help in the protection of the park to make it better or greater than what it’s currently in.
Click to view the Port Royal National Park video.
