Tobago's Main Ridge Forest Reserve: "for the purpose of attracting frequent showers of rain"
Welcome to the third piece in this series highlighting the biodiversity of Tobago’s Main Ridge. This week, Amy Deacon has invited her colleague Aidan Farrell, a Plant Biologist at The University of the West Indies, to take us on a tour of the lush vegetation of the Main Ridge reserve -and why we can’t do without it! This feature was first published in the Tobago Newsday on Thursday 17th February 2017. A recent botanical survey of Trinidad and Tobago carried out by the National Herbarium, found that the Main Ridge was home to a third of the most biodiverse plots in the country. The survey recorded close to 350 plant species in the area, including 12 endemic plant species. This high diversity is in large part due to Tobago’s geological history; as well as sharing many species with the South American continent, it also supports species typical of the Antilles. Importantly, this diversity has been retained in the Main Ridge as it has been protected from explo...