ENVIRONMENT: Jamaica Gets the Red Card

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sam Pragg

KINGSTON, May 20 1998 (IPS) - With recent reports showing Jamaica high on the red list when it comes to the world’s most endangered plants, environmentalists are wringing their hands in despair as they try to find ways to counter what they are describing as an unacceptable situation.

Jamaica ranked fifth on the red list with well over 33,000 or 10 percent of the known species of vascular plants described as threatened.

“Jamaica’s one of the countries that is losing its plants at a rate that is unacceptable,” says Roger Williams, Manager of the Blue and John Crow Mountains National Parks.

The National Parks are one of the areas of concern, along with the Cockpit Country located in the western end of the island where most of the endemic plants are to be found.

Half of the plants found in the Blue Mountain are endemic either to that area or to the island, while 100 known species of unique plants have been identified in the Cockpit Country.

Of the 3,200 known species of flowering plants on the island, 900 are unique to Jamaica, but more than two-thirds of these are in danger of extinction. Several palm trees, some species of cacti, fern and rare orchids are among the threatened plants. Then there is also the blue mahoe, cedar, mahogany and water mahoe.

This is bad news for an island which at one time ranked among the top 200 most important plant locations in the world. The depletion of the plants also has an adverse effect on some other species.

“The water mahoe is the tree that the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly feeds on. Because of the number of water mahoes lost, the butterfly’s very existence is being threatened,” says Williams.

The Giant Swallowtail is the largest butterfly in the world and it only thrives on leaves from this particular tree. But like several other trees, their numbers are declining because of farming and logging activities.

But while environmentalists continue to wring their hands in despair, to many ordinary Jamaicans there is no cause for alarm. They simply see what they do as a way of survival and cannot see the long term effects of their actions.

“I have been cutting lumber all my life, and the trees have always been there. There are so many trees around that there’s no way that they will just disappear,” says 54-year old logger, John Campbell.

What Campbell does not understand is that the country’s forestry reserves have also been depleted at an alarmingly rapid rate. Well- forested areas went down from 32 percent of land cover in the 1920s to 18 percent in the 1950s and in the 1970s stood at a mere six percent.

No other survey has been conducted since the 1970s. Environmentalists fear that given the kinds of activities which have taken place in the country over the last 25 years, the picture will be even more dismal when the results of any survey are out.

Buildings have been going up rapidly both in this capital city as well as rural areas and many trees have been cut down indiscriminately, environmentalists say with not many people paying attention to the long-term effect.

“Professionals who have a direct impact on natural environments like engineers and architects must also be made more aware about the importance of plants and urged to build around existing trees,” says Andreas Oberli, director of the plant conservation centre in Kingston.

“Ideally, areas slated for development should be examined by a qualified person for endemic and threatened plants before they begin building.”

Oberli acknowledges however that in Jamaica there are not enough people who are able to identify the endangered plants. Williams, on the other hand, stressed the importance of education.

“We need to educate people to change the way they do some of the things that they’re doing,” says Williams.

But then there is still a problem with those who are indifferent toward the environment.

For instance, 30 year old Hyacinth Smith, a small farmer is one of those persons. ” I couldn’t care less about the environment. As long as it doesn’t happen (catastrophe) in my lifetime, it doesn’t matter to me,” she says.

But for those people who do not see preservation of the natural environment as their responsibility and insist on behaving as if its destruction does not matter to them, Williams feels that a more serious approach needs to be taken by the country’s law courts.

“We need to enforce the laws, especially as it relates to lumber. We’ve had the problem of arresting people in the past, and they got off with a light fine.

Persons found guilty of destroying endangered species are penalised at the discretion of the judge and usually they get away with minimal fines.

“The measures taken by the courts don’t deter me. The money I make from the lumber far outweighs the meagre penalties imposed by the courts,” says Campbell.

“I have mouths to feed at home. Don’t tell me about the environment when I have no other way to live. Show me another way to make a living and I will stop clearing land,” adds 42 year old farmer, Delroy Johnson.