Rekindled forest fire in Cuban national park under control

HAVANA, Cuba, May 5 (ACN) In the municipality of Yateras, north of the Piedra la Vela Ecological Station of the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, a recently rekindled forest fire is under control, a remnant of a large forest fire detected on April 16 and controlled a little more than a week later, in pine forests and charrascos of this emblematic Cuban protected area.

The fire, previously reduced in that mountainous locality of Guantanamo and in places of the neighboring municipality of Moa -from where it spread-, now encouraged by the high temperatures, the drought, the air and still burning underground trees, threatened again from a point near the well-known Loma del Mulo, in the foothills of the Yarey river basin.

Gerardo Begué-Quiala, deputy director of the Humboldt's Environmental Services Unit, reported the details from the place, exclusively to the Cuban News Agency, taking advantage of some telephone coverage from the adjacent Alto del Yarey, an observation point or natural viewpoint with a wide panoramic view, where the expert biologist is monitoring the fire focus today.

This Tuesday, about thirty members of the local Forest Ranger Corps and of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, specialized in the control of these fires, are suffocating the flames, who with an intensive attack have already managed to corral the phenomenon within a containment line, an effective technique to subdue the flames.

Reconnaissance helicopters fly over the area, the Municipal Defense Council remains at the head of the movement of professional firefighting forces, and volunteer brigades from various institutions and the community itself have come to support them, all in order to safeguard the Park, declared a World Heritage Natural Site by UNESCO in 2001.

Since 2017, no events of this type had been recorded in the Humboldt park, and the current one is the largest in the history of this protected area, considered a Cuban sanctuary of biota due to its level of endemism and conservation, with more than 70 thousand hectares extended in the northeastern peaks of the Island, between Holguín and Guantánamo, in the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa Orographic Group.

Preliminary estimates spoke last week of some 3,000 hectares possibly affected, but it is still early for an exact report, since the assessment that will collect, in physical units, the magnitude of the damages has just begun, to then activate the recovery actions and in a more advanced phase monitor the rehabilitation dynamics that will be achieved.

Part of the rehabilitation program will be of direct management, and large areas involved, given its intricate location and rugged relief, will be under the good protection of natural regeneration and the proven resilience of the ecosystem to overcome adverse incidents.

Alejandro de Humboldt Park is the most important within the Cuban National System of Protected Areas, the main nucleus of the Cuchillas del Toa Biosphere Reserve, and one of the most biodiverse insular and tropical sites in the world, where two percent of the world's flora is represented and there is one of the richest fauna refuges in the Antilles.

In December, this Olympus of Cuban nature will celebrate 20 years of being included in the list of World Heritage Sites and legally ratified by Cuba as a National Park, a period in which its surface has increased its forest cover from 78 to 96 percent, thanks to natural regeneration and the work of experts and technicians, proud protectors of its landscapes, which are a beautiful natural showcase.