The Maroon leaders who spoke at Saturday's annual January 6 celebration in Accompong Town in St Elizabeth have made what appears to be a very interesting case for the Cockpit Country to be protected from bauxite prospectors.

According to Accompong Maroon elder Mr Melville Currie, the Cockpit Country possesses economic benefits, including its potential for eco-tourism, organic farming and the pharmaceutical industry.

"The Cockpit produces any medical herb that you can think of," Mr Currie told his colleagues and guests. "Ancient medicine," he said, "rests in this land."

Mr Currie's colleague, Colonel Frank Lumsden of the Charles Town Maroons, said the Cockpit Country was central to the drive to build Maroon unity for economic development.
"The Cockpit Country is of vital interest, because of all the medicinal and pharmaceutical possibilities," Colonel Lumsden was reported in yesterday's Daily Observer as saying.

With that in mind, the Maroon leaders say they will use a conference planned for June 20-23 - to mark the last battle at the Spanish River in Portland before the end of the first Maroon War - to zero in on the possibilities for development of this pharmaceutical industry.

The idea, we believe, makes perfect sense, particularly when it is framed in the context of the research findings of doctors Henry Lowe and Joseph Bryant that two plants endemic to Jamaica have so far shown promise as cures for five types of cancer.

That research has rightly received a pledge of financial support from the Government. And while we know that there are no guarantees, we are hoping that any drug manufactured from these plants will, in fact, confirm the research findings.

The Cockpit Country, regarded by environmentalists as a biodiversity hotspot, is home to thousands of rare plants and animals.

Mr Currie claims that he has benefitted medically from using plants found in the Cockpit Country, so much so that he has never had need to see a doctor.

We have no way of confirming the validity of that statement. However, we cannot dismiss his claim either. For who knows for sure what, if any, medicinal properties can be extracted from the plants in the Cockpit Country?

It seems to us, therefore, that the Maroon leaders should vigorously press this point with the Government whenever the agriculture and lands minister, Mr Roger Clarke, holds his promised meeting with the Cockpit Country stakeholders.

The Government, too, should think seriously of assisting medical research projects in the cockpits, once the administration is convinced those ideas hold weight.

That, we believe, will pull the Government out of the pickle it now finds itself in over this issue.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World