Archaeological evidence shows that people lived in this area 3,600 years ago, long before the plantations that gave the park its name. Plantation Slagbaai was established in 1868, producing salt from the natural saliñas -- shallow, hypersaline ponds left behind when ancient sea levels dropped, trapping seawater behind coral reefs. The operation was never large. Compared to the southern saltworks at Pekelmeer, Slagbaai's salt pans produced roughly thirty times less. The plantation also harvested aloe vera, work performed almost exclusively by women from Rincon who would camp on-site for a week at a time in huts made from cactus wood, cutting the leaves after the rainy season when they held the most juice. Plantation Washington ran a similar operation -- salt, charcoal, goats. A hurricane in 1954 severely damaged the Slagbaai salt pans, and the plantation was abandoned. When the Bonaire government established the park fifteen years later, it was preserving not pristine wilderness but a landscape that industry had used and discarded.

Mount Brandaris, at 241 meters, is Bonaire's highest point, and it sits within the park. The hike to the summit takes roughly 45 minutes along a moderate incline through the thorny, low-growing scrubland that characterizes most of the park's vegetation -- xerophytic shrubs and kadushi cactus adapted to an island that receives almost no rain for months at a time. From the top, the view unfolds in every direction. On clear days, the island of Curacao is visible to the west, and the mountains of Venezuela's coast appear across the southern horizon. Below, the park's landscape reveals its structure: the saliñas glinting white and pink in the sun, the rocky coastline where waves break against ancient coral, and the green pockets of vegetation that cluster wherever water collects. It is the only vantage point from which the full geography of Bonaire makes sense -- the arid northern highlands giving way to the low, flat salt pans of the south, the fringing reef visible as a line of lighter water encircling the entire island.

The park's saliñas, the same salt pans that once supported a modest industry, now serve as nesting and foraging grounds for Caribbean flamingos. During the dry season, the birds concentrate in the park's five major lagoons. In the rainy season, they scatter to temporary pools that form along the roads. The flamingos are the most visible residents, but the park's real significance lies in the breadth of species it shelters. Washington Slagbaai is designated an Important Bird Area, providing critical habitat for endangered and restricted-range species. The yellow-shouldered parrot, listed under CITES, nests here despite facing threats from rats, feral cats, and -- historically -- poachers who took chicks to sell. Since 2008, after international trade protections took effect, the parrot population has increased. Three species of endangered sea turtles -- green, hawksbill, and loggerhead -- nest on the park's beaches. Common terns, Sandwich terns, and least terns breed along the rocky shores. The park hosts approximately 340 plant species, most of them adapted to survive on almost nothing.

Washington Slagbaai is managed by STINAPA Bonaire, a nonprofit foundation that operates on behalf of the island government. The park's story is not one of untouched nature but of recovery -- a landscape that was farmed, grazed, harvested, and abandoned, and that has spent the past half-century returning to something close to its original state. The goats that gave Slagbaai its grim name are largely gone. The aloe fields have reverted to scrub. The salt pans, no longer maintained for commercial harvest, have found a new economic function as habitat for the flamingos that draw ecotourists. The women from Rincon no longer camp in cactus-wood huts during harvest season, but the connection between Rincon and this land persists -- the park borders the oldest settlement on the island, and the road between them is one of the most traveled on Bonaire. What Washington Slagbaai demonstrates, quietly and without fanfare, is that a landscape does not need to be pristine to be worth protecting. Sometimes the most interesting conservation stories begin with a slaughter bay.