| Bauxite mining threatens Cockpit Country |
| Monday, 23 October 2006 | |
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Jamaica’s Cockpit Country, around 450 km² of uninhabited moist tropical limestone forest with its extraordinary landscape of peaks, potholes and caves, and home to 27 of Jamaica’s 28 endemic bird species is at risk from bauxite mining.
Under licences already granted, mining companies have begun drilling for bauxite samples, the raw material for aluminium, to meet the world’s rapidly escalating demand for this valuable metal. Conservationists in Jamaica are concerned that despite its international importance, the fate of the Cockpit Country is likely to go unnoticed by the rest of the world. “Unfortunately for the birds, landscape, and many communities, Jamaica is pushing hard to extract every bit of bauxite from her soils to export for aluminium production,” —Susan Koenig, Cockpit Country Stakeholders Group “Unfortunately for the birds, landscape, and many communities, Jamaica is pushing hard to extract every bit of bauxite from her soils to export for aluminium production, and we recently learned that this threat is close to reality for Cockpit Country,” said Susan Koenig of the Cockpit Country Stakeholders Group, a coalition of concerned environmentalists, tourism industry representatives and schools. |
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