Peter EspeutDON'T THINK that the victory for Hope Gardens meant that Jamaica's natural environment is now safe from destruction. Not by a long shot! The guns are now trained on the Hellshire Hills in St. Catherine! Environmentally, the Hellshire Hills are a gold mine of biodiversity.
A 1970 survey by the UWI revealed that there are 271 different species of plants to be found there, of which 53 are endemic found only in Jamaica, and several found nowhere else on the planet!
The Hellshire Hills is the best example of a dry limestone forest left in Central America and the Caribbean! In addition there are at least six animal species found there and nowhere else in the world. The last remaining wild population of Jamaican Iguanas (Cyclura collei), the world's most endangered lizard, are found there about 100 adults. The only known population in the world of the Blue-Tailed Galliwas (Celestes duquesneyi) is found there.
The only known populations of three species of the Thunder Snake (genus Trophidophis) in the world are to be found there. The Jamaican Fish-Eating Bat (Noctilio leporinus) is found only in the Hellshire Hills and nowhere else in the world. And there are large numbers of other Jamaican endemics found there also: e.g. the Coney (Hutia), the Jamaican Boa (Yellow Snake) and several birds.
Recognising the great value of this forest, the Hellshire Hills were declared protected on April 22, 1999 along with the rest of the Portland Bight Protected Area, by Minister Easton Douglas, the central figure in the Hope Gardens saga! But in the news this week is the announcement that the Jamaica Public Service Company Ltd., has applied for and has received a prospecting licence from the Commissioner of Mines to explore removing limestone from the Hellshire Hills. What a travesty! The bulldozers will soon be moving in to build roads into the area. A significant part of Jamaica's natural heritage will be lost forever!
The Commissioner of Mines - whom I know personally knows that the Hellshire Hills forms a part of the Portland Bight Protected Area; yet he gives JPSCo the prospecting licence without so much as mentioning it to the NRCA for their comment! This cannot be good governance, or good planning.
Craggy-coastline
In fact, the South Coast Sustainable Development Plan just completed and about to be implemented, specifically recommends against mining in this area. The left hand of the government does not know what the right hand is doing!
Not that the Hellshire Hills were all that safe. The Urban Development Corporation (UDC) gained the title for the Hellshire Hills to build houses. Listen to what their web site says about the Hellshire Hills: "Hellshire Hills, an untrampled 27,000 acres of virgin, non-arable land bordered by 10-miles of craggy-coastline protected by coves and bays, lies west of Kingston Harbour in the parish of St. Catherine. The vast potential of this previously inaccessible location, for residential, commercial and recreational development became evident with the construction of the Hunt's Bay Causeway and the flood control discipline imposed on the Rio Cobre. Its feasibility as a designated area was enhanced by the emergence of several privately-built housing schemes in neighbouring Portmore.
In 1967, the St. Catherine Redevelopment Company was formed to undertake land acquisition and primary infrastructure works to facilitate in the development of the area. The development plan for the area, now affectionately called Hellshire includes three self-contained communities, accommodation up to 300,000 persons, in neighbourhoods of varying densities. It also identifies internally-generated employment opportunities in building construction, the hospitality industry, light manufacturing and the commercial mining of indigenous marble and limestone deposits.
Hellshire Bay, the first community established by the UDC under the Hellshire Hill Development Project, comprises 969 acres, sub-divided into 16 development blocks designed for housing a new generation of Jamaicans."
From the text you can see that the UDC recognises the virgin nature of the Hellshire forest, but it doesn't seem to make any difference. After the Iguana was rediscovered in 1991, and the signing by Jamaica of the Biodiversity Convention in 1992, I thought that these plans had been abandoned, but I seem to have been mistaken.
Now the Hellshire Hills are being threatened by the government itself through these wholly government-owned companies (the UDC and the JPSCo)!
I thought the plans for the destruction of Hope Gardens were bad, but this is much, much worse. I believe Jamaica's international reputation is at stake, for to threaten to make extinct from the face of the planet so many endemic plants and animals, is a blow to our Jamaican heritage and a crime against humanity itself! I suppose a government which appears to condone brutality against its innocent citizens and torture of its prisoners can erase a few plants and animals from the face of the earth.
Where do we go from here?
Peter Espeut is a sociologist and is executive director of an environment and development NGO.
