Diana McCaulay, Contributor
THERE'S A broken-down bulldozer at the entrance to the building site. I climb up a steep, rocky hill, the ground uncertain under my feet. At the top, I see the devastation, acres of it, the torn patches of surprisingly rich earth, jumbles of boulders, piles of chopped, burned bush, a few lone trees, the inevitable coal kiln.
The Blue Mountains rise behind me in a rough semi-circle, the city of Kingston and the sea lie in front. You can see why anyone would want a house here; you'd own one of the best views in Jamaica and it's surprisingly cool.
There are no living sounds on this ravaged piece of earth, but I can hear gunshots from the rifle range on Mountain View Avenue. Facing the unequivocal evidence of complete disrespect for our priceless natural assets, the shots seem like a commentary on Jamaica; the death of life, a life full of death.
I'm standing at the top of Long Mountain, the third largest dry limestone forest in Jamaica, and a swathe of destruction has already been cut through it.
A dry limestone forest is a tough habitat, because there's little soil and no surface water. The life there is tenacious and well-adapted to the conditions. The Long Mountain forest is exceptionally dense and looks mostly like bush, although very tall trees do grow in hollows. I see two endemic trees, the black birch and the red birch, their branches twined around one another. The bulldozers missed them, probably because of the red markers tied to their trunks. Another red birch tree grows straight out of a huge rock. If Long Mountain is destroyed and a more enlightened generation of the future wishes to restore what we've lost, it'll take 1,000 years, if it can be done at all?
Tropical treasures
Tropical dry limestone forests are ecological treasures, known for their unique plants and animals. Very few intact dry limestone forests remain in the Caribbean and all the major ones - Hellshire, Portland Ridge, Long Mountain and Round Hill in Clarendon - are in Jamaica. Most of Long Mountain is primary or undisturbed forest. According to estimates done by satellite, less than eight per cent of Jamaica's primary forests remain, but this doesn't include dry limestone forests because satellite imagery can't identify the undisturbed portion. Whatever the precise figure, the fact is we've already destroyed nearly all our primary forests. You'd think it would be an easy decision to protect what's left.
Apart from its ecological importance, Long Mountain is also a Taino (Arawak) site of major archaeological significance. Its caves and crevices may contain artefacts of great value, which we have already begun to bury.
Then there are the threats to the city's water supply posed by this development. Removal of the forest on Long Mountain will result in increased run-off to the Mona reservoir, which has already had its storage capacity substantially reduced by siltation. In addition, sewage from housing will percolate through the porus limestone to the ground water, polluting the National Water Commission's wells, which are about to be rehabilitated. The NWC was sufficiently concerned to commission its own Environmental Impact Assessment, which recommended the project should not go ahead.
Green light
Some time after the Hope Gardens debacle, interested persons were summoned to a meeting at Jamaica House, where it was announced that the housing development proposed for Hope would be moved to Long Mountain. It was clear a decision had already been taken to sacrifice one more important chunk of Jamaica's natural heritage without the benefit of an Environmental Impact Assessment and without meaningful public consultation. (Meetings were apparently held with the Beverly Hills Citizens Association, but that is not good enough. Long Mountain does not belong to the residents of Beverly Hills, nor for that matter, to the Government of Jamaica).
I asked Franklin McDonald, executive director of the Natural Resources Conservation Authority , if the NRCA had received an environmental impact assessment for the Long Mountain development.
"The EIA is under way," he said.
"But there are already bulldozers on the land," I objected.
"Permission was given by the owners of the land for some surveying," he replied.
I did see survey lines, but they were insignificant in comparison to the large areas which had been bulldozed. This is how we do things in Jamaica. The Government strikes quiet deals with developers to the detriment of the Jamaican people and in defiance of its own laws.
Leaving Long Mountain as the sun set through a haze of distant rain, I climbed a little way down one of the survey lines and saw a plant of one of the Long Mountain endemics, Portlandia Albiflora. Even to my eyes, it was unspectacular. But it doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, not even anywhere else in Jamaica. And unless we find a way to oppose unlawful development-as-destruction, it will very soon be gone from the earth forever.
