ENVIRONMENT-CUBA: Rains Save Forests, but Drought Continues

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, May 29 2002 (IPS) - The start of Cuba’s rainy season put an end to the forest fires that have been burning since April. But the rainfall is insufficient to alleviate the severe drought plaguing the eastern part of this Caribbean island nation.

An estimated 10,000 hectares of forest have been destroyed since a fire broke out on Apr 18 in the Ciénaga de Zapata (Zapata Swamp), the largest wetlands in the Caribbean, located 200 kms from Havana.

The fire raged out of control until May 8. But the head of the forest ranger corps, Lieutenant-Colonel Azel Castro, said only rainfall could totally put out the flames.

“People who live around the swamp say that when the crabs come out of their burrows, the rains come, but this year I haven’t seen a single one,” Herminio Guzmán, a tourist-bus driver who often travels to the swamp, told IPS.

Cuba’s rainy season lasts from May to October. Sources at the Cuban Institute of Meteorology say the last few months have been drier than normal, especially April – the same pattern that has been seen in the past few years.

Lieutenant-Colonel Castro said this was the first time a fire has swept through the Zapata Swamp, declared a biosphere reserve by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

He added that although isolated fires have also broken out in the country’s grasslands, this was the first time the flames have destroyed natural forests.

The relatively high levels of humidity in wooded areas of the island provides natural protection against fires. But according to local press reports, it had not rained in the region since Nov 4, when Hurricane Michelle pulled out of Cuba after lashing a good part of the country for 15 hours, with winds of up to 200 kms an hour.

Official reports described Hurricane Michelle as the worst natural disaster to hit Cuba in 50 years, in terms of material and economic losses.

The fallen trees and bushes left behind by the hurricane in the Zapata Swamp, estimated at more than four million cubic metres of forest resources, provided abundant fuel for the fires, on top of the drought and the unusually high temperatures registered since April.

The head of the municipal government, Vladimir Barreto, told the newspaper Juventud Rebelde that the worst impact of the fire in the reserve was ecological, due to damage to the flora and fauna, which is still pending assessment by specialists.

Fires of similar intensity have broken out in several provinces in central and eastern Cuba, even jeopardising towns and cities near wooded areas.

In the central part of the island, in an area known as Motembo, a fire reported in mid-May destroyed more than 1,130 hectares, including 519 hectares of pine forest, more than 60 hectares of eucalyptus trees, and 26 hectares of fruit trees.

The firefighting brigades of central Cuba also worked ceaselessly to put out fires in Cubanacán, a 7,000-hectare forest reserve that is home to 14 endemic species of plants (species that can only be found in that specific location). In addition, 93 species of birds inhabit the reserve.

The National Information Agency reported two fires in Camagüey, 534 kms from Havana, which swept through more than 5,000 hectares of woodland and 7,000 hectares of savannah in mid-May.

Official sources reported that in the eastern province of Holguín alone, over 90 forest fires of varying size have been documented so far this year, the last of which occurred in Moa, Cuba’s main nickel-producing area.

Experts at the National Institute of Meteorology predicted that the rains would not arrive until around May 20, after which the frequency and intensity would be normal, rather than the heavy rainfall needed after a period of severe drought.

Much heavier rainfall is needed in the regions that have been hid hardest by the drought, like the eastern province of Las Tunas, where more than 4,000 head of cattle have perished.

Agriculture Minister Alfredo Jordán reported on May 17 that the drying up of natural sources of water had made it necessary to bring in water every day to ensure the survival of more than 400,000 head of cattle.

In all of the eastern provinces, the landscape is one of yellowed, withered grass, dry reservoirs and livestock barely clinging to life, after 100 days without rain. Milk production has plunged.

There are areas where “the grasslands are virtually gone, or look like they have been burnt. In fields that have no irrigation system – in other words, most farmland – the plants are stunted due to the lack of water,” said the president of the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources, Jorge Luis Aspiolea.

He added that the impact of the drought was also visible if one looked at the shoots of sugar cane, which along with tourism is Cuba’s leading source of foreign exchange.

The situation is even more critical in six remote municipalities in Guantánamo, over 900 kms from Havana, where local authorities have had to send in water wagons to supply around 20,000 people.

Ileana Alvarez, a resident of Santiago de Cuba, told IPS by phone that the water pipes function once a week in that eastern city, Cuba’s second-largest. “You depend on the water you are able to store” in containers, she said.

The 240 dams and reservoirs that make up the national water system held 450 million cubic metres of water at the start of the month, around 50 percent of capacity, said Aspiolea.

Institute of Meteorology studies project that the rainy season will not bring enough water to fill the reservoirs, despite an intense period of cyclones announced for June, which would bring flooding, high seas and torrential rains, thus contributing to filling the reservoirs but doing little for the soil and the sustained growth of plants.