A-list American actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio has lauded local efforts to protect the Jamaican iguana and offer the endemic, endangered reptiles a permanent home on the offshore Goat Islands.

DiCaprio, in a tweet on Friday, May 22,

praised the Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group, which hopes to create a sanctuary

on Great Goat Island for the reptiles in the coming years.

“The Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group may be

able to start releasing #JamaicanIguanas to the wildlife sanctuary on the

#GoatIslands within the next few years. The sanctuary can hold up to 10,000

iguanas,” DiCaprio shared with his 19 million followers.

The Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group may be able to start releasing — Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio)

The Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group may be able to start releasing — Leonardo DiCaprio (@LeoDiCaprio) #JamaicanIguanas to the wildlife sanctuary on the #GoatIslands within the next few years. The sanctuary can hold up to 10,000 iguanas. Photo: @robindmoore @global_wildlife pic.twitter.com/tr8CIQHX7lMay 22, 2020

The Jamaican Iguana Recovery effort was

featured by international organisation Global Wildlife Conservation earlier in

May, as GWC likened the success story to a phoenix: rising from the clutches of

sure extinction.

“Its newest chapter promises to be its most

hopeful yet. Scientists are working to release iguanas on Goat Islands, which

were declared a wildlife sanctuary in 2017. Greater Goat Island could become a

predator-free haven for Jamaican Iguanas and other endangered species within

the next few years,” GWC wrote.

The Jamaican iguana is a large bluish-grey

lizard with red eyes.

The reptiles are among nearly a dozen rocky iguana species found in the Caribbean, however, the Jamaican iguana can be found nowhere else in the world, which makes the task of keeping them alive and thriving that more important.

“For thousands of years, the iguanas and

other reptiles were the largest land animals in Jamaica. When humans introduced

non-native mammals to the island in the late 1800s, it marked the beginning of

the swift decline of the Jamaican Iguana until it disappeared in the early

1950s. Scientists thought the Jamaican Iguana was extinct for 40 years until it

was unexpectedly rediscovered in the Hellshire Hills on Jamaica’s mainland in

1990,” Global Wildlife Conservation continued.

It was like hitting the biodiversity

jackpot and ever since, the Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group has worked with fervour

to save the animals.

The islands, located just off the coast of

St Catherine, were seen as the ideal habit for the re-emergence of Jamaica’s

iguanas, but a secretive but lucrative 2015 deal between the People’s National

Party-led (PNP) government and a Chinese firm threatened it all.

“The Jamaican government made a secretive deal with a Chinese company to build a transhipment hub in Portland Bight, which includes Goat Islands—the only place with enough habitat for a healthy and thriving population of Jamaican Iguanas. The port would have razed Goat Islands, making it uninhabitable for the Jamaican Iguana and many other species,” the Texas-based GWC continued.

Massive outcry from the local community and many conservationists vested in protecting the biodiversity of Goat Islands forced the government to abandon plans to build the port in the ecologically sensitive area.

Just when all hope seemed lost, the iguana

got a new chance at survival, and two years later, in 2017 Goat Islands was

officially declared a wildlife sanctuary.

Read more on the .Jamaican iguana feature here