Dominican Sustainable Tourism Alliance

The Dominican Sustainable Tourism Alliance (DSTA) Project partners with a consortium of tourism industry leaders, including Counterpart, Academy for Educational Development (AED), The George Washington University, The Nature Conservancy and the National Geographic Society, to work with Dominican national institutions including the National Association of Hotels and Restaurants (ASONAHORES) and the Ministry of Tourism, Environment and Labor.

This partnership works to improve tourism sector support, cooperation and linkages along the tourism value chain while fostering the development of an enabling tourism policy environment. An important focus is integrating conservation and sustainable management of natural resources into regular decision making processes. The project identifies and recruits key stakeholders including rice grower associations, government agencies, water user groups, agricultural chemical supply companies and private crop financial agencies.

Counterpart is also working with the Ocean Foundation to provide the fishermen from the Monte Cristi and Parque Nacional del Este with training and materials needed to build 100 "lobster casitas." The concept of the "lobster casita" was developed by a Cuban fisherman who noticed the migration of lobsters at night while they hide during the day. He had the idea of constructing little houses ("casitas") for the lobsters so they could find shelter during the day. The "casita" consists of a frame of metal bars covered with cement and shaped like a table-top. Usually placed in shallow water, the casitas are harvested by free-diving once every week or ten days during the lobster fishing season.

The "casita" became a fishing tool as the fishermen were able to go catch the lobsters directly in their "casitas" while making sure they would only remove the adult ones, leaving under-sized and egg-carrying lobsters in the water to help increase the local lobster population. The environmental benefit of the "lobster casita" is that it provides increased shelter habitat for lobsters, which are often in short supply, increasing the carrying capacity of the coral reef system.

It is hoped that the dominant situation of overabundance of coral predators in the Dominican Republic will be resolved by this new technology, helping to restore the natural balance within the two marine parks, while increasing local resources and support for no-take areas and other marine park regulations.

Photos: © Christine Hicks/Counterpart International.