OFFICIALS at Shortwood Teachers’ College have started a project to identify and preserve hundreds of plant species on the more than 300-acre school compound.

According to head of the project, Claudette Thorpe, senior lecturer and environment co-ordinator at the college, the idea is to establish the school as a ‘Green Learning Community’.

“The basic idea behind this project is to develop awareness among the college community in plant bio-diversity, conservation and management,” said Thorpe. “We have a whole range of plants around us and a lot of people don’t know about them, so one of the components of the project is to develop a database which would include the name of the plants – both common and pet names – and to make documentation of their importance,” Thorpe said.

The two-year project is being funded by the Global Environmental Fund (GEF) and the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica (EFJ) to the tune of nearly $4 million. Twenty-five students and staff members have already volunteered to participate in the project. Some of them, Thorpe said, will be trained in developing green spaces at other institutions outside the college.

More than 150,000 plants have already been named and photographed, and Thorpe said that is only the beginning of the task as the majority of the project’s focus will be on conducting research.

“A major component of the project is research. So whenever we identify a plant, we can do our research to know if what we have is really what we have identified it as,” she told Environment Watch. “In addition, not only will we be identifying the plants, but we will also be looking at their aesthetic and medicinal properties.”

Thorpe noted that orchids are among the endemic plant types that the project will be paying specific attention to because of its aesthetic value, as well as the threat it faces of becoming extinct. She said that an orchid farm will also be developed on the compound as part of the project.

In addition, she said that various herbs will be planted during the project for their medicinal value.

“We would certainly want to dedicate some of the space to those plants (ginger, cerassie, etc), as well as certain vegetables which may help the school community with the increase in food prices,” Thorpe said.

Although this latest environmental project is one of the most expensive undertaking at the teachers’ college, it is not the first. In 2004, Thorpe successfully spearheaded the Early Childhood Environment Resource Centre, which served to provide information on environmental education as well as to train teachers on how to use the environment as a teaching tool.