Sandy Cay, Virgin Islands now part of the BVI National Parks Trust: May 1st 2008

[Bruce Potter]

In the 1950's Laurance S. Rockefeller was charmed by the 14-acre Sandy Cay set in the channel between Tortola and Jost Van Dyke in the British Virgin Islands ("BVI" or Virgin Islands (UK)). Sandy Cay lies just north of the then new Caneel Bay Plantation "RockResort" in the Virgin Islands National Park that Rockefeller had just donated to the US Government. One theory has it that Rockefeller was particularly interested in the Cay because it was then believed by physical oceanographers [erroneously, as it turns out] that long-term movements of sand banks in the Virgin Banks spread sand down current on the Virgin Banks, and that by buying Sandy Cay to prevent the beach sand there from being mined for construction, he would be protecting sand resources for the beaches at the Caneel Bay Plantation resort.

Laurance Rockefeller bought the island from the three Smith Brothers who jointly owned it, and spent the next 40+ years managing the planting, placement, and pruning of native plants on the island in the past and in monitoring the maintenance of trails and the removal of trash caused by storms or sometimes left on the cay by thoughtless day visitors, including the growing number of charter yachts based in the BVI. He visited the Cay frequently and made all management decisions about the island personally.

Flash forward nearly fifty years, and Rockefeller, now in his late 80's had sold off (in 1986) the RockResorts because he no longer felt competent to manage them with the attention he felt they deserved, and he and his associates began to plan for the future of Sandy Cay, which Rockefeller wanted to keep well protected, managed and maintained as a wilderness protected area with no development but with open public access for low intensity recreation and visits.

Working with Island Resources Foundation Laurance Rockefeller in 2000 at the age of 90 began a search for a competent manager for the long-term disposition of Sandy Cay. Over the course of the next eight years, working with Laurance Rockefeller and associates managing the estate after his death in 2004, Island Resources Foundation coordinated three major projects with at least 13 major products, ranging from a total revision and integration of the conservation laws of the Territory, to new fiscal management and auditing processes for the BVI National Parks Trust, to detailed negotiations on the precise terms of the donation agreement and long-term day-to-day management and monitoring procedures that would be part of the future management commitments by the National Parks Trust for Sandy Cay.

May 1st, 2008, the eight year process climaxed with the formal transfer of Sandy Cay from the estate of Laurance Rockefeller (represented by Clayton Wesley Frye of New York City), and the Government of the Virgin Islands (UK), in a ceremony in the Botanic Garden in Road Town, Tortola, attended by dozens of local dignitaries and a large delegation from the Island of Jost Van Dyke, including Elementary School Students who enchanted everyone with a playlet about the Cay and the singing of an original composition of "Oh Sandy Cay, Oh Sandy Cay," to the tune of O Tannebaum.

The Transfer ceremony itself consisted of two simultaneous acts: the transfer of the Cay to the Government of the BVI, and the immediate designation of the Cay as a protected wildlife area to be managed by the BVI National Parks Trust.

Many of the participants in the ceremony noted that the transfer culminated a long list of properties donated to the BVI by Laurance Rockefeller for long-term protection and management, in addition to the seminal donation in 1991 of the Sage Mountain mahogany forest, Devil and Little Bay in Virgin Gorda, Fallen Jerusalem island, and the Dogs (cays north of Tortola with extensive coral gardens). Islanders and visitors alike noted that Rockefeller was the ideal combination of careful entrepreneurial investor, always seeking to work with local interests to ensure a balance of personal and corporate gain with long-term community gains in welfare and wealth, and that it seemed harder to find these stellar qualities in the current environment.

Based on the observations of this one attendee, there were no representatives of the local or foreign developer or tourism community (other than the Government Tourist Board Chairman himself) at the public ceremony for the transfer, which was held shortly after work hours within a kilometer of most of their offices.