Tobago Main Ridge

Declared in 1776 by the British parliament of the then colony of Tobago — the same year as American independence — it is the oldest legally protected forest reserve in the whole western hemisphere. Its very early protection came not from any concern with biodiversity conservation in the modern sense, but from a practical worry of the colonial planters themselves: keeping the ridge's forest intact to preserve the rainfall regime their surrounding sugar cane plantations depended on, an early and pragmatic instance of what today would be recognised as hydrological ecosystem services.