In memoriam: Lester Jean Baptiste 1956 - 2010

By Matt Morton

Theodore "Lester" Jean Baptiste joined the Saint Lucia Forestry Department (Ministry of Agriculture) in 1976, working in the Department's Soufrière Range. He spent much of his working life in the rain forests of Saint Lucia. He retired in 1990 but his understanding of, and expertise in navigating, these mountainous forests was so valued that he continued to be contracted by the Ministry to assist with a number of wildlife projects. He was closely involved, on the ground, throughout the campaign to save the globally threatened Saint Lucia Amazon, a campaign that spanned over thirty years and has seen a remarkable, and very uncommon, recovery of this parrot's fortunes.

Lester worked with Durrell for a number of years and he provided invaluable support to a pilot study to test a new method for estimating the size of the parrot population. During this Lester worked, lived and slept in the forest with a team of Saint Lucian wildlife professionals, range workers and a parrot expert from Durrell, Jersey, Hester Whitehead. The pilot was a success, and a second survey took place in early 2008, which saw the same team living and working together back in the forest. These surveys set the stage for an ambitious island-wide survey in early 2009. But before that, months of groundwork was needed, locating, assessing and flagging sample points throughout the whole of the forest: nearly 80 square kilometers of very unforgiving terrain, much of it accessed during an uncommonly wet and muddy wet season. Lester worked with a team of Durrell volunteers during these months, safely leading them through the forests and sharing his knowledge of its plants and animals. For the 2009 parrot survey, Lester joined teams made up from a total of 34 Saint Lucian, Dominican and Saint Vincentian foresters and volunteer overseas biologists, for a gruelling six weeks of trekking, climbing, and parrot surveying; sleeping in hammocks by night and cooking over campfires. The respect and affection felt for this quiet, modest man during these arduous weeks was very evident amongst all his coworkers.

After the parrot surveys, Lester joined Durrell volunteers and Forestry Department staff on the intensive work to remove non-native iguanas (that had escaped from cages, bred in the wild, and threaten to hybridize with Saint Lucia iguanas) from around the Soufrière area. Once more, Lester not only worked, but also lived, with the volunteers and Forestry staff at an apartment rented near Soufrière. By day, Lester's skill at finding ways through the steep ravines and ridges of the Soufrière crater was indispensable to the teams in their tireless search for iguanas. I'm very aware of how much people valued spending time with Lester and how much of a friend he was to them.

Lester was killed in a landslide at 4 a.m. on Sunday the 31st of October 2010, as he slept at his home in Fond St Jacques, near Soufrière. The landslide followed a strike by Hurricane Tomas that sat directly over Saint Lucia for about 36 hours, dumping huge amounts of rain. One of Lester's daughters, Lucia Lenox, and her mother, Theresa Lennox, were also killed in the same landslide. Their houses were completely swept away and many others in the small community of Fond St Jacques were severely damaged. Lester is to be buried in Soufrière on Wednesday the 17th of November.

I knew Lester over several years, but not nearly as well as the Saint Lucians and overseas volunteers who he shared so much of his time with in the field. I had to write to nearly 30 people just from amongst the overseas lot to let them know the terrible news. Many have written back to express how much this has affected them, and how badly they feel this loss. Many have also asked if there is any way they can help. We have set up a website at http://www.justgiving.com/Hester-Whitehead to take donations if anybody wants to make them. Any money raised will be given to Lester's surviving family to help defray the costs of his funeral and give them some funds to start rebuilding their lives after the damage caused by Hurricane Tomas. But I hope also that people who knew Lester will feel free to use this blog and share their feelings and memories of him here too.