Some really good news for Dominican wildlife. There is news coming out of Puerto Plata that technicians from the Ministry of Environment have found a population of Solenodontes, a Dominican native mammal that is in extreme danger of extinction, in the area of the 27 Waterfalls of Damajagua in Puerto Plata province.
The administrator of the Natural Monument of Damajagua, Robert Luis Gomez Santana, said that researchers from the ministry were able to identify the group of Solenodontes.
The full report will be made public tomorrow at 11am from the visitor center in this protected area.
The Solenodontes is the only native mammal on the island of Hispaniola and is apparently almost a throwback to the age of the dinosaurs. It is nocturnal and feeds mostly on insects and is rarely seen by humans. A distant cousin of the species survives in Cuba. At the present time, according to the International Union for Nature Conservation, Solenodontes are in danger of extinction. The research that led to discovering this group of mammals in Damajagua was led by a José Mateo Feliz, who is the director of Biodiversity at the Ministry of the Environment.
Read more in Spanish:
El Dia
13 August 2018
