Victory for Jamaican conservationists?

From BirdLife:

Victory for Jamaican conservationists?

12-06-2006

A Jamaican High Court judge has ruled in favour of the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association (NJCA), Jamaica Environment Trust (JET) and four individuals in a Judicial Review case concerning the granting of an environmental permit for part of a planned 1,918-room hotel in the Island’s bird-rich Pear Tree Bottom area of Runaway Bay.

On 16 May, Justice Sykes quashed the environmental permit granted to Hoteles Jamaica Piñero Limited (HOJAPI) for Phase One of the hotel and ordered that the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) reconsider the application for the project. …

“There used to be many endemic birds in the forest including the Vervain, Mango and streamertail hummingbirds, and the globally threatened Yellow-billed Amazon parrot.

Shorebirds and seabirds love the Pear Tree Bottom coast precisely because of the shallow back-reef and sand bars – the very habitat that the hotel wants to dredge in order, they say, to ‘improve habitat’!” commented Wendy Lee of the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association (NJCA).

Protection Requested for Jamaica’s Rare Yellow-Billed Parrot: here.

Hummingbirds in Colorado, USA: here.