Jamaica's Cockpit Country is recognized locally and globally for its unique biological diversity, its premier karst geomorphology, and for its functional role it maintaining important life processes on Jamaica. The conservation of its biodiversity is required to ensure the integrity and function of this complex ecosystem, which depends upon the interactions among rock, water, soil, air, flora and fauna, and time. With the recognition that both financial and human resources for conservation efforts are often a limiting factor, effective management strategies need to be developed that (1) identify the most critical threats and (2) can be implemented efficiently and monitored by local resource managers and other concerned stakeholders.
Site Conservation Planning (SCP), an adaptive management tool developed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), was used to analyze the viability of the biological diversity (species, ecological communities, ecological systems, and the functional processes they maintain) in the Cockpit Country environs and to identify and rank the activities that cause stresses to these systems. These assessments will guide the formulation of conservation strategies, which will be developed during Phase II of the SCP process, Situation Stakeholder Assessments. Additionally, these biodiversity assessments provide baselines from which to monitor, evaluate, and adapt management strategies through time. The goal of SCP is to develop and prioritize conservation strategies that will be most effective at abating threats and improving the health of the biological diversity of Cockpit Country.
Information and judgments that contributed to the SCP analysis came from on on-line "Virtual Workshop"of experts, who have experience with Cockpit Country and/or management of karst limestone landscapes. An interactive website (http://www.scp.cockpitcountry.com) was developed by Windsor Research Centre (WRC) and will be maintained for continued re-assessments by local and overseas experts. Live workshop fora contributed to further refinement of conservation targets and threat assessments. These workshops included attendance by a team representing the Cockpit Country PiP partner organisations of WRC, TNC, and the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency (STEA) at the Islands Efroymson Fellowship Workshop in Kaua'i, May 2002, and participation of Forestry Department personnel in a one-day workshop hosted by WRC, June 2002 (see Annex 7.1 for listing of all SCP participants).
Experts recognized the biological and geological diversity that interact to form the unique functional landscape of central Jamaica's Cockpit Country. Within this landscape, above-ground and subterranean systems are linked by a set of ecological processes, states, and gradients. The experts initially chose a set of conservation targets that represented these dynamic and static conditions and then further identified individual species that will require additional conservation attention:
The ecological processes, states and gradients associated with each of these conservation targets and the nested targets which will be conserved under each umbrella system are summarized in Table 1.
The most pressing critical threats affecting the functionality and long-term viability of Cockpit Country are related to: (1) agricultural practices, both historical clearing which contributed to an overall reduction in forest cover and fragmentation of remnant forest, and current practices of shifting agriculture associated with poor cultivation practices; (2) habitat-altering non-native invasive plant species, the establishments of which are facilitated by deforestation and fragmentation; (3) mining and quarrying activities; and (4) the persistence of non-dynamic gaps (e.g., trails) (Table 19). Conversion of forest has resulted in high intensity, widespread stresses among all conservation targets, either by altering ecological processes via reduced area, loss of connectivity or direct extirpation of species. The establishment of non-native plants is a threat to the Wet Limestone Forest across its total occurrence area, with as-yet unknown effects on native wildlife via habitat loss and degradation. While bauxite is not being extracted at present in Cockpit Country, the presence of bauxite deposits throughout 70% of the area (Anonymous, pers. comm.), existing leases issued by Government of Jamaica, and the irreversible effects of mining to the landscape and biological diversity have long been cause for concern. There is additional concern for the construction of Highway 2000 along the southern periphery of Cockpit Country, both the direct placement of the highway and the indirect effects, such as the need for limestone fill which might be quarried from Cockpit Country. Trails throughout Cockpit Country alter microclimate conditions, which in turn present barriers to dispersal for species with limited mobility and facilitate the spread of invasive plant and animal species.
Despite these stresses, the overall health of Cockpit Country as a functional landscape and the biodiversity found within is considered "GOOD." Because of its large size, the Cockpit Country ecosystem appears to be able to recover from natural perturbations (e.g., hurricanes) and is considered viable over the next 100 years. However, Cockpit Country's isolation from other remnant patches of Wet Limestone Forest renders the landscape context as "FAIR." Of future concern is whether Cockpit Country represents a minimum-size area necessary to support viable populations of Jamaica's larger wildlife species (i.e., to explain species absences from neighbouring forest blocks).
A conclusion of the biological assessment is that conservation strategies which address stress abatement (e.g., reduction of forested area converted to agriculture; addressing the threat of mining and quarrying) and enhancement of biodiversity health (e.g., restoration of areas dominated by non-native invasive plant species) will provide the most efficient and effective protection for the long-term viability of Cockpit Country. Phase II of SCP will see the development of potential conservation strategies and their ranking based on (1) benefits in abating critical threats or persistent stress and leverage potential; (2) probability of success and feasibility; and (3) cost of implementation.