Morne Diablotin National Park is a national park in the northern mountain ranges of Dominica

Dominica

Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...

, an island nation in the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

. The park comprises 8,242 acres, amounting to 4.4% of the nation's area. It was established in January 2000, primarily to protect the habitat of the endangered Sisserou Parrot, an endemic bird species that is a national symbol of Dominica.

The park is home to 1,447-meter high Morne Diablotin, the tallest mountain on the island and the second highest mountain in the Lesser Antilles

Lesser Antilles

The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...

.

During the 18th century, the land was home to at least six different encampments of escaped slaves. Dr. John Imray

John Imray

Dr. John Imray was a medical doctor, legislator, agriculturist and botanist. Born in Scotland he studied medicine at Edinburgh University and arrived in Dominica in 1832 to take up the only public medical post at the time: surgeon to the prison.Imray published papers on tropical diseases and...

, a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

, completed the first recorded scaling of Morne Diablotin in 1867. Today, the park is home to 18 different avian species.