Editing Nevis (section)

===Colonial deforestation===
[[File:Nevis-lookingtosea.jpg|thumb|upright=1|On the western coastal plain, looking south-southwest towards Charlestown]]
During the 17th and 18th centuries, massive [[deforestation]] was undertaken by the planters as the land was initially cleared for sugar cultivation. This intense land exploitation by the sugar and cotton industry lasted almost 300 years, and greatly changed the island's [[ecosystem]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Frucht |first1=Richard |title=Community and Context in a Colonial Society: Social and Economic Change in Nevis, British West Indies |date=February 1966 }}</ref>

In some places along the windswept southeast or "Windward" coast of the island, the landscape is radically altered compared with how it used to be in pre-colonial times.<ref name="Wilson" /> Due to extreme land erosion, the topsoil was swept away, and in some places at the coast, sheer cliffs as high as {{convert|25|m|ft|abbr=off}} have developed.<ref>Wilson, Samuel (1990). "The Prehistoric Settlement Pattern of Nevis, West Indies". ''Journal of Field Archaeology'', Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter 1989), p. 428: "The breakup of the fringing reef has itself contributed to extensive and accelerating coastal erosion on the windward coast of the island, where sea cliffs of unconsolidated volcanic gravels as high as 25 m have developed."</ref>

Thick forest once covered the eastern coastal plain, where the Amerindians built their first settlements during the Aceramic period, complementing the ecosystem surrounding the [[coral reef]] just offshore. It was the easy access to fresh water on the island and the rich food source represented by the ocean life sheltered by the reef that made it feasible for the Amerindians to settle this area around 600 BC.<ref name="Wilson" /> With the loss of the natural vegetation, the balance in runoff nutrients to the reef was disturbed, eventually causing as much as 80 per cent of the large eastern fringing reef to become inactive. As the reef broke apart, it, in turn, provided less protection for the coastline.<ref name="Wilson" />

During times of maximum cultivation, sugar cane fields stretched from the coastline of Nevis up to an altitude at which the mountain slopes were too steep and rocky to farm. Nonetheless, once the sugar industry was finally abandoned, vegetation on the leeward side of the island regrew reasonably well, as scrub and secondary forest.{{Citation needed|date=October 2023}}