Hunting for wasps and chickens – The volcano and the environment.

Alongside the stress on the people, the volcano obviously did untold damage to the environment.  As well as being an intensively farmed area on its lower slopes, its upper reaches and several valleys were rich in fauna and flora.  Before the eruptions, several studies had looked at the ecology of the southern hills around Soufriere.  The significant hills of the central region had been less studied and more or less dismissed as an area of less interest.

With the eruption both turning much of the southern part of the island into at best a fresh landscape ready to start again with lower order plants, at worst an arid moonscape poisoned for centuries, the unscathed Centre Hills became more of a focus for environmentalists.  And what they saw surprised them greatly.  There was both more biodiversity here than expected, and it was home to some of the more bizarre plants and animals that Montserrat contained.

With the national level of resources in government at an all time low, and focused on rehousing, rehabilitating and rebuilding the infrastructure and life on the island, there were few resources to look at this biodiversity.  As with other islands I had worked with, especially the Overseas Territories, some big names from the UK were trying to assist.  In 2008 I was asked to assist with a particular project that the UK Government’s “DARWIN” initiative had funded,  that was to write action plans for all the key species in this region.  My role was to look at the monitoring of these creatures and plants and see how it integrated with the government’s GIS.

I’d wanted to go to Montserrat for many years but so far had only seen it smouldering in the distance the many times I came into land in Antigua Airport.  Montserrat had come and seen me once.  When I was living on Tortola, I had gone to California for a conference and when I returned to my apartment high above the sea, I found a thin layer of red dust covering the whole terrace, including the tables and chairs.  Montserrat had had another eruption and the particles had been blown on the wind over 200km to the Virgin Islands.  I’d also met a few people from there and had tried a couple of times to formulate projects.

The north end of Montserrat and the Centre Hills in the distance