Little Cayman resident Brigitte Kassa has donated US$200,000 to the island’s District Committee of the National Trust for the purchase of 17 acres of environmentally and ecologically important land.
According to a press release, the parcel of land adjoins another Trust-held property on the Nature Trail at the west end of Little Cayman’s interior.
The land nearly doubles the contiguous protected area “at a time when pressures of speculative real estate development are increasing,” the Trust stated.
The parcel lies in prime Sister Islands rock iguana habitat and may contain historic artefacts from the phosphate mining industry that was on the island at the end of the 1800s, the release noted.
Kassa settled in Little Cayman with her late husband Basil in 1973, when there were fewer than 20 inhabitants on the island. She is a founding member of the Little Cayman District Committee and a life member of the National Trust.
“She has always been an enthusiastic and extremely active member, from staffing the Trust House to setting up for the annual Easter Auction and Christmas Bazaar and attending regular committee meetings. She even assisted with the construction of the Gladys Howard Visitors Center in the 1990s, doing everything including painting and operating heavy equipment, lifting the roof trusses in place with her backhoe,” the Trust said in its release.
Kassa has previously made substantial monetary and land donations to the National Trust.
Her life story is detailed in her autobiography, “From Coffee to Champagne, to Coconuts”, from her childhood in war-torn Berlin in World War II to her glamorous youth as a nightclub owner in Monte Carlo, to her global travels with her husband and to her settling in Little Cayman, which she describes as her greatest love.
All proceeds from the sale of the book are going to the Little Cayman District Committee land fund.
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