Human rights groups and environmentalists in Puerto Plata are reporting that people are destroying the buffer zones around the Isabel de Torres National Park, and that the authorities are turning a blind eye. Mario Almonte, the local president of the Dominican Human Rights Committee, called for an end to the depredation of the natural resources in different communities in the province.
Almonte specifically asked that the President of the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina, intervene in this case of “ecological crime” that is going on with impunity.
Making reference to national figures such as Gregorio Luperon and Juan Lockward, who honored the beauty of Isabel de Torres, Almonte said that one day nature would come to collect for the destruction of this National Park.”
He also said that a considerable area on the side of the hill had been razed by bulldozers and other heavy machinery to build the new school in the sector of los Dominquez and this included cutting down 100-year-old mahogany trees. The project did undeniable damage to the national park and represents an imminent danger to the children who will populate the school because the natural drainage coming down the mountain will certainly inundate the area of the school and possibly cause a landslide.
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El Dia
21 June 2018
