Porfilio Correa López
At the present time, one of the problems that affects the conservation work in Alejandro de
Humboldt National Park, is soil erosion, particularly gully erosion that causes degradation of the natural ecosystems. The project will involve the residents of this protected area to make them conscience of the importance of the soils. The soils are the primary base for the sustenance of all other terrestrial natural resources. The residents will be involved in establishing the measuring system that will be an important part of the sustainable integration project for residents and the protected area.
Soil does not at first glance strike many people as a resource requiring special care for its preservation. In most places, even where soil erosion is active, a substantial quantity of dirt seems to remain underfoot. Associated problems, such as loss of soil fertility and sediment pollution of surface waters, are even less obvious to the untutored eye. Nevertheless, soil erosion is a significant and expensive problem in an increasing number of places as human activities disturb more and more land. Erosion is a natural and continues process. Soils are made by means of the erosion of parental material and their local deposition or by means of transportation and their deposition toward another place. Worry isn’t the erosion, but the accelerated erosion.
The gully erosion is the more obvious and dramatic demonstration of these processes and the sum of cost-reducing and ecological losses due to that , it can catch up with astronomic levels, which is why it is necessary to consider measures that foresee the correlated processes this phenomenon or decrease its negative consequences, furthermore for the protected areas , where the fact that erosion has as a result ecological alterations that affect the fauna and the flora must be considered with especial interest.
The East Sector (Baracoa), of “Alejandro de Humboldt” National Park, is where major human activities exist, and historically the forestall, agricultural and multiple use areas have been poorly managed. Occasionally, the degrading phenomenon has intensified, destroying not only the soil, but the local environment. Through the development of the present project, we aspire to educate the Park’s inhabitants about the importance of soils for their subsistence and the necessity of rehabilitating the protected areas. Secondly, motivate the communal participation by implementing anti-erosive measures at particular farms and in the natural areas.
The project tries to be one point of departure to undertake the actions of degraded areas restoration in "Alejandro de Humboldt" National Park, that it is an one more bigger, complex and important belonging to the protected areas of the country, and to serve of example for others communal, with the purpose that they integrate the sustainable management of the natural resources at the environment they live in.