Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary

Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary occupies 42 per cent of the Ramsar wetland at Graeme Hall, in Christ Church, Barbados. It is owned by Peter Allard, a Canadian investor and philanthropist. In late 2011 he was named Queen's Counsel by the province of British Columbia. He has put more than US$35 million into the 35-acre eco-tourism site to preserve the last and significant mangrove woodland and wetland on Barbados.

The sanctuary is home to the Graeme Hall Swamp, a mangrove swamp which was a popular tourist attraction until about 2006. However, due to an ongoing dispute between the owner and the Barbados government over uncontrolled pollution, allegedly from bordering government-owned land, it has been closed to the public. Since about 2008 it has increasingly suffered from raids and poaching by locals about which the local police are reportedly doing nothing.

As of 2014 it was the last example of the numerous coastal swamps which once dotted the leeward coast of Barbados from Speightstown on the northern west coast to Chancery Lane Swamp just south of the airport. Over the years all of the swamps have been filled in for commercial development killing all of the wildlife that depended upon them. When St. Lawrence Gap was similarly developed for tourism this destruction included filling in the very last duck shooting swamps that were connected to the Graeme Hall Swamp. This is the last significant mangrove swamp in Barbados, and its international importance as a reserve and as a staging post for thousands of migratory birds was recognised by it being declared a Ramsar wetland.

Two species of mangroves occur in the area, red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle) and white mangrove (Laguncularia racemosa), both of which thrive in the brackish water of the swamp. However the mangroves and the wildlife that they support are considered to be at high risk of dying in the very near future due to: the increasing dilution of the brackish water by fresh-water run-off, the deliberate dumping of raw sewage into the swamp by the government's South Coast Sewage Treatment Plant, and the deliberate blocking off of the sea-water sluice at Worthing Beach.

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