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Reinaldo Cosano Alén
HAVANA, March (www.cubanet.org) - The red mangrove, black mangrove, patabán
and yana are the four species indigenous to Cuba of this so very important
coastal plant, whose importance as a regulator of the environment is beginning
to be recognized. Moreover, the mangrove is a mainstay of many forms of life.
It still isn't possible to evaluate the importance of this species of flora
in all its dimensions, which occupies 4.8% of the surface of the Cuban
archipelago, while preserving the coastal lands as an ecological refuge.
According to official data, mangrove swamps represent 26% of all the
country's flora. But these ecosystems are among the most damaged by an anarchic
policy that includes dredging, canalizations, dams, asphalt roadways, garbage
dumps, rubble and poisonous chemical substances.
The creation of coastal causeways to link keys and adjacent islands has
resulted in a major ecological crime, resulting in changes in the levels of
salinity, wave movement and water temperature. The victims of this assault on
the ecology have been the mangrove and the associated species of flora and fauna
to which it gives life.
The dumpings from the mineral production process in the nickel and cobalt
mines in Moa and Lengua de Pájaro in the north of the eastern province of
Holguín have had a tremendous impact on the mangroves of those coasts.
The lack of wood - mangrove is an excellent hardwood - for repair and
construction of dwellings and furniture has made many put their eyes and hands -
authorized or clandestine - on the valuable wood.
The petroleum drilling industry has for decades used pulverized mangrove in
large
quantities.
A population strangled by poverty living in remote areas where the mangrove
grows, has had to resort to the red wood for the construction of their dwellings
or as an energy source in the form of wood or charcoal, generally having no
other kind of fuel.
Agriculture, in need of posts and poles for drying tobacco and other uses,
needs the
mangrove for its superior quality and durability. For its part, the logging
industry needs no less than one million of these fully grown trees, whose full
growth can vary between thirty and fifty years. The leather tannery also has
need of the mangrove.
The mangrove can protect the island's coasts, which by its long and narrow
configuration, is at the mercy of large natural disasters. If polar melting and
the increase in the level of the seas and oceans continues, the mangrove swamps
could act as a shock absorber for the avalanche of the sea.
These coastal forests have paramount importance from other ecological points
of view: they are the source of natural cooling of the surroundings by
contributing much humidity to the atmosphere; they absorb quantities of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main gas which causes global warming; they
create a considerable mass of organic material in whose sediments an entire
chain of animal and plant life find life, especially fishes, crustaceans and
shellfish. Many birds inhabit the mangrove forests, and when other forests are
reduced by deforestation and drought, bees find their nourishment in the
mangrove swamps, the same as thousands of insects.
Cuba has received financing from UNESCO's MAB Program to help lessen the
damage to these forests, but it will be necessary to plant each species of
mangrove in the precise places which have not been taken into account in the
reforestation plans, according to officials of the Institute of Ecology.
Versión original
en español
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