CAMAGÜEY. - “The Sierra de Cubitas is the best preserved ecosystem in firm ground of Camagüey. For years the study of its geography, the botany, the biology and archaeology caught many people that covered it in one and another direction up to going so far as to know its secrets”. This way the Bachelor Jorge Aguilar Pérez presents the place to us in his article The Sierra de Cubitas, a treasure cast into oblivion.
Aguilar is one of those that remained caught in the always special mountain ambience and as geographer and speleologist tried to unravel its mysteries.
Many years after those adventures of a golden epoch, Jorge is leading a singular combat in the same Sierra de Cubitas. He tries to make real, along with other romantics of the nature, a species of green island before so many climate change threat. The existence of Ecological reservation LimonesTuabaquey is due to them, - of which he is now the director - in the bosom of the National System of Protected Areas.
CUBITAS´ JEWELS
After numerous investigations in the environment of Sierra de Cubitas, in 1999 the departments of Tourism, Agriculture and of Science, Technology and Environment presented projects of the best options for the nature tourism.
Seven of the options evaluated by the National Commission of Tourism of Nature are in the field of the Reservation. Among those, the footpath that crosses the Paso de los Paredones and that leads up to the imposing Bonet's Hole (“route of the intrepid ones”), a path that for the Paso de la Vigueta or Camino Real leads us up to the cavern The Owl (The gardens of La Vigueta), a path that goes up to the highest point of the plain geography, the Hill Tuabaquey and other that goes up to the cave Maria Teresa.
Sunk between the hills Lookout of Limones and Tuabaquey - the two biggest heights of the Sierra de Cubitas - the gorge of Paredones crosses from north on south the mountain. This scenery of incomparable geography and geology is part of the Reservation Limones-Tuabaquey. It constitutes a space for the landscape and ecological conservation of about 2 000 hectares.
“In the conservation area there are the principal values of the Sierra de Cubitas, with very punctual places in the hills Lookout of Limones and Tuabaquey, where caves open with pictography, while the fauna affected by the cyclones, goes in recovery, fundamentally the birds”.
PROJECTS IN EXECUTION
“The protected areas are based on biological research stations conceptions. Inside our protected area we have three areas: that of Limones, that of La Vigueta and that of Tuabaquey. Even inside the same territory, they have differences as for vegetation. Tuabaquey, for example, is the richest that exists in Cubitas, especially in the top, where there appears vegetation of charrascal proper of the flatness. That gives it an extraordinary value, since it might serve to explain the geologic history of the raising of the saw from the flatness up to turning in a mountain into a process of million years”.
The recovery works include the construction of a center for visitors provided with 15 huts, which will contribute to a major quantity of persons approaching to nature and learning to preserve and to protect the environment. The center includes restaurant, convention rooms and an exhibition area or arboretum, with the objective to encourage certain species in a controlled ambience so that the persons do not have to go to see them in the conservation areas.
These works join the traditional footpaths and interpretive places and the area for the intensive care of the species in danger, a kind of hospital where any needy animal finds specialized attention.
A principal mission now in execution for the workpeople of the area is the restructuring of the biological research stations of Limones and that of Tuabaquey.
“The project has to make them sustainable, for example, in Limones, a group of work with technical staff and skilled workers fulfills the tasks of 13 projects of conservation, among these those of birds, reptiles, mammals, species of the threatened flora; against fires, for the recovery of the forest, for the natural forest rehabilitation... with independence of the works of sowing, cattle breeding, etc. All this, thinking about a supplying of the dining room of the Reservation, as well as for workers and their families, neighbors of the community... realizing that the grounds are limited and the resources are few”.
ON A GOOD WAY
The Ecological Reservation commemorated, in last December, 20 anniversary of its foundation. The program comprised the recovery and the maintenance of all the facilities.
We work to achieve that in this 2020 our biological research station is declared of reference to protected areas, of how they can be sustainable”, says Jorge with the optimism of the one who knows good directed towards the recovery of the Award of the Environment of Camagüey, as well as the National Award of the Environment obtained in 2008.
The second stage of this project of rehabilitation, initiated in January, has to spread until March. This way they continue the arrangements to reach a program of birthday that will close on April 12, Day of the Protected Areas. In agenda a scientific workshop is conceived to exhibit the main results of the area and of others of this type in the country.
“In this time not only we have won in efficiency and conscience in the culture of nature, - affirms Aguilar Pérez - there has been achieved a wide sense of identity of the settlers of the nearby communities of the Reservation. The identification arises as the work is consolidated and it is recognized the recovery of the environment of which we are part. This is a gained battle, but not the last one”.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez