Ecobreves – GUATEMALA: A Call to Protect Cloud Forest

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 22 2005 (IPS) - Local and national authorities are calling on the Guatemalan Congress to declare El Amay mountain, in the northern department of Quiché, a protected area, because it is one of the country's few cloud forests and is habitat for symbolic Guatemalan species like the quetzal bird. “At the current rate, in some 12 years the forest cover of the mountain could be lost,” Ronny Roma, of the government's National Council for Protected Areas, CONAP, told Tierramérica.

Roma says that the mountain is home to a great diversity of species, both plant and animal, but it also holds important water resources and archeological remnants from the pre-Colombus era.

“We recognize the ecological wealth and the tourism potential of our lands, which is why we want to preserve them,” said Víctor Hugo Figueroa, mayor of Uspantán, a municipality which shares the mountain with Chicamán municipality.

The two are part of Quiché department, located some 170 km north of the Guatemalan capital and on the Mexican border.