More than 50 hectares of soil eroded by canyons have been corrected this year in the Yumurí Canyon Outstanding Natural Element, a protected area in Guantánamo province that is prioritizing actions by Life Task, a plan by the Cuban state to counteract the effects of climate change, approved by the Council of Ministers in 2017.
Geovannis Cardoza Matos, who leads a team of 21 people from the Flora and Fauna Base business unit in the municipality of Baracoa, explained that the conservation work on the degraded surfaces involved the installation of dams with plants with fibrous roots and debris from other trees and rocks.
These living and dead barriers prevent the soil’s vegetation layer from being washed away by influences such as rain, wind and people when they violate environmental protection regulations.
In the picturesque site, which covers 910 hectares, 13 projects for the conservation of endemic plants and animals will be implemented, while environmental education will be promoted among local farmers and visitors to this area, which is highlighted by its impressive natural beauty. .
The initiatives emphasize the need to avoid polluting the Yumurí River with toxic substances and dumping products harmful to flora and fauna on the four hiking trails set up on the site.
Also prohibited are the felling of trees such as the Caguairán and the illicit marketing of the Cuban coleus (Polymita picta), which deserves the Mollusk of the Year 2022 award in a competition sponsored by the LOEWE Center for Transnational Genomics of Biodiversity Germany.
Cardoza Matos highlighted the results of a study on the behavior of the reproductive parameters of endemic species of the inventoried bird world and the development of artificial nests to protect their eggs and young from the harmful intrusion of predators.
In order to guarantee the survival of the Creole Blue Palm (Roystonea violacea León), which is on the Red List of Cuban Vascular Flora as it is in critical danger of extinction due to the destruction of its habitat, its populations are reinforced by georeferencing the individuals that flourished and the Gathering its fruit, he said.
On October 4th and 5th, 2016, the Yumurí River Canyon was one of the areas hardest hit by the fury of Hurricane Matthew, a hydrometeorological phenomenon that downed thousands of trees in its vicinity.
Margaret Caesar Stone,
ACN