ONLINE petitions to save Goat Islands from development of a trans-shipment port are attracting growing membership on popular social media site Facebook (FB) and a leading social change platform Change.org.

Up to just before 3:00pm, an FB page called ‘No! to Port on Goat Island, Jamaica’, and which was created on Saturday, had 323 members.

A plea on change.org, meanwhile, had registered 162 signatures up to yesterday afternoon.

“By liking this statement you are signing a petition to show your disapproval of a port facility being built on the Goat Island, Jamaica. You also are in support of setting the land (Goat Islands) aside to help repopulate the indigenous species & protect the surrounding waters,” reads an opening post on the page.

Creator of the group Steven Smith, who resides in the US, said via e-mail that the information on the page represented “both sides of the issue” and included comments from the general public as well as newspaper articles.

“The public is welcome to use this forum to discuss and post current information on the plan and to let the officials know what their concerns are for this proposed project,” Smith said in an e-mail to the newspaper.

In addition to urging against the building of the port, the petition is also intended to promote the protection of the ecosystem surrounding the Goat Islands.

Also on change.org is an appeal by Carolyn Bredwood of Glen Ridge, New Jersey, dedicated to the Goat Islands cause.

It is titled ‘Stop Jamaican Gov’t & China Harbour Engineering Co (CHEC) from Port Development in Goat Island’, and was created on August 30. Up to yesterday afternoon, it had about 30 signatures.

It described the Chinese Gov’t suggeston to build the port a “modern form of imperialism and colonialism”, but incorrectly stated that there were inhabitants on Goat Island who would suffer from the construction of a port facility saying: “Giving way to a port [was] telling the people of Goat Islands they do not matter”.

An additional petition called ‘The Jamaican Government: Stop exploration of Jamaica’s Goat Islands as a Chinese logistics hub’ recorded 25 signatures.

“We cannot keep choosing economy over ECOLOGY. The line has to be drawn to protect our country’s ‘NATURAL’ interests,” the last one, created by one Phil Rodriques of Mandeville, read.