Vegetation and Wildlife
Although most of Jamaica's native vegetation has been stripped in order to make room for cultivation, some areas have been left virtually undisturbed since the time of Columbus. Indigenous vegetation can be found along the northern coast from Rio Bueno to Discovery Bay, in the highest parts of the Blue Mountains, and in the heart of the Cockpit Country.
As in the case of vegetation, considerable loss of wildlife has occurred beginning with the settlement of native peoples in the region millennia ago. For example, the only pinniped ever known to the Caribbean, the Caribbean monk seal once occurred in Jamaican waters and has now been driven to total extinction.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Jamaica
Famous quotes containing the words vegetation and/or wildlife:
“We love to see any redness in the vegetation of the temperate zone. It is the color of colors. This plant speaks to our blood.... What a perfect maturity it arrives at! It is the emblem of a successful life concluded by a death not premature, which is an ornament to Nature. What if we were to mature as perfectly, root and branch, glowing in the midst of our decay, like the poke!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)