The public should demand the Rosewood Tucker's Point development be scaled back, former conservation officer David Wingate said yesterday.He said the proposed special development order (SDO) would build on virgin land equivalent to Yellowstone National Park, one of the largest parks in the US.Dr Wingate further claimed the current proposal to build 78 private residences and 70 hotel rooms on the 240-acre Castle Harbour property would lead to an “extraordinarily high” subdivision of the land.“The entire development relative to Bermuda's land area would represent a loss of open space equivalent to Yellowstone National Park or the Everglades National Park on the continental scale,” he said.“Even worse, the ten-year limit on the SDO puts pressure on Tucker's Point to sell or develop them all within that period.”Dr Wingate said because a lot of the development is due to take place on the densely wooded Paynter's Hill and Quarry Hill it would mean “total deforestation” and a lot of rock excavation to level terraces for the house foundations. The caves under the hills are another area of concern.In his opinion the proposal is “saturation development”.International cave researcher Tom Iliffe has said the caves support more than 60 species of native and endemic marine invertebrates in their drowned sections.“The dry caves are likewise a largely un-explored library of Bermuda's pre-colonial avian and land snail heritage in the form of fossils which are slowly being discovered and described by myself and others,” Dr Wingate added.“One might well ask how such a supposedly upscale hotel operation can be in the business of obliterating this unique Bermudian heritage and replacing it instead with an expensive copy of Miami Beach when so many other hotels worldwide are learning to capitalise on the eco- and cultural tourism of their home areas.”Another concern was that 17 of the 19 surviving yellowwood trees on the hill from Bermuda's original virgin forest would be damaged by wind exposure.He added: “While I have no doubt that the new Tucker's Point management is more environmentally conscious than in the past, the bottom line is that no amount of compliance with stringent Planning conditions short of not building at all would avoid massive environmental damage on those virgin hills at the density proposed with this new SDO. You can't have your cake and eat it too.”He suggested the public “should take a lesson” from the successful Egyptian revolution and collectively say no to the “insane SDO”.“We simply cannot allow the present one to go forward,” he said. “No one wants tourism to fail here but the road we are presently on is the road to environmental and economic suicide.”Residents should try to purchase areas of the property for a public park, he said.“Could we not help to bail out Tucker's Point through this awful recession by acquiring Paynter's Hill, at least, for a nature reserve within our parks system?” he asked. “And remember, Tucker's Point has already agreed to concede Mangrove Lake and that beautiful palmetto-clad hillside opposite Harrington Sound Post Office as additions to the parks system as part of their proposed SDO.“In exchange I believe it would be economically and environmentally sound to support that part of the proposed SDO which proposes an upscale development on the top of Whitecrest Catchment Hill, because it could be largely concealed without damage to the woodlands below and could actually result in a restoration of that presently quarried out and catchment-covered site.“HSBC has been extraordinarily generous in funding aspects of the Cooper's Point Nature Reserve, but that effort will be cancelled out fourfold if they are really putting pressure on Tucker's Point and Government to go ahead with this SDO in an economically misguided attempt to get Tucker's Point to repay the loan from them.”Environment Minister Walter Roban has said stringent conditions have been put in place to protect caves as well as flora and fauna on the property.Rosewood Tucker's Point has received an SDO for planning in principle but must still go through Department of Planning procedures to get final approval to start construction.Useful websites: www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/, www.best.org.bm, www.tuckerspoint.com.