All set for Cockpit Country development
Published:Thursday | September 29, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Mark Titus, Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
MINISTER OF Tourism Edmund Bartlett says plans are now in place for the development of the Cockpit Country into a world-class eco-tourism product by 2013-2014, and gave the assurance that the forested area's biodiversity will be protected.
"The south is set for ecotourism development and for countryside tourism," he said. "It is going to be a new an exciting experience, because more people from around the world are travelling now for the ecotourism experiences than previously," Bartlett said.
According to the minister, the timeline represents the care being placed on the planning of the project by the collaborative efforts of the Ministries of Agriculture and Tourism, The Forestry Department and the Urban Development Corporation.
"Our tourism's development with eco-values is in harmony with the environment," he continued.
"It will be showing how you care for the environment and in so doing earn, and so the educational tours will be about how to protect your trees, how to protect your environment and the rich biodiversity of Jamaica, as well as the 900 species of plants and wildlife in the Cockpit Country."
The Cockpit Country is a mountainous, forested area of western Jamaica, rich in biodiversity and home to the Leeward Maroons of Jamaica. Its landscape of steep-sided hills and deep, round valleys eroded from the limestone bedrock is an outstanding example of karst topography.
The wet limestone forest of the Cockpit Country is Jamaica's largest remaining primary forest and a refuge for rare Jamaican animals such as the Black-billed parrot and the Giant Swallow-tail butterfly, and more than 60 endemic plants.