My Interest in Navassa

In my teens, I wondered if I could start my own country somewhere. Navassa Island looked promising: it was small, remote, and uninhabited. But the U.S. Coast Guard administered the territory as the site of an automatic navigational beacon and the island was unavailable and not really habitable. Over the next few years, my interest in nationhood evolved into a small private project to deliver publishers overstock books to schools in Jamaica and other West Indian islands. I raised some money to buy books, mostly overstock almanacs, at a few cents on the dollar. The rest I arranged to have shipped, mainly to the Jamaica Library Service. This activity became dormant when I resumed study for college examinations in 1981.

I decided to post some web pages on Navassa in the spring of 1996. Since then, I have provided some research support to scientists who have visited Navassa, and I have answered inquiries from the general public.

Navassa has the potential to serve as a valuable baseline for environmental research and restoration in the region. The island's Caribbean environment is unique, having survived the twentieth century undamaged. But industrial fishing in the area and the effects of climate change on the coral reef may damage the island's ecology.

Navassa is also claimed by a nearby country, the Republic of Haiti, which objected to the reassertion of U.S. ownership in 1998. My hope is that Navassa will not fall below the radar of official U.S. attention until some new crisis forces it back into view.

See also My Interest in Micropatrology
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