Santiago-based environmental organizations say blatant environmental violations have been taking place ignored by the government during the coronavirus epidemic. The Ecological Society of Cibao (Soeci) says these are an alarming attack on the environment. The Soeci experts have verified more than 10 complaints related to indiscriminate cutting of endemic and native trees, forest fires, depredation of wooded areas and the destruction of forest cover.
The entity says that a large area of Pico Diego de Ocampo, in Santiago, has been destroyed to give way to farming, planting limes and other crops, livestock grazing, and the construction of new people settlements.
The environmental society also mentions unexplained fires in forest areas in Gurabo in the central and northern mountain range, environmental damage in Valle Nuevo, Jaragua National Park, Los Haitises National Park, Sierra de Bahoruco National Park, Armando Bermúdez National Park, Sierra de Martín García, in the former Manolo Tavárez Justo Park, Constanza, Dajabón and Santiago Rodríguez province.
The Society also denounces the accumulation of large mounds of fly ash from the Punta Catalina Thermoelectric Power Plant in Peravia.
The list of aggressions denounced by the Ecological Society of Cibao also includes the case of Cabarete, Puerto Plata, where a hotel chain is drying up wetlands, eliminating mangroves and occupying part of the high tide to build a hotel complex.
The environmental organization indicates that all these cases, complemented by the destructive mining extractions and the pollution from the discharge of wastewater, are detrimental for the overall production of water, that is fundamental for life, the development of the people and the production of any nation.
They regret that people are taking advantage of the current quarantine situation in the country, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to attack nature.
“Regrettably, people are taking advantage of this moment in which everyone is concentrated on surviving and overcoming this dangerous pandemic to savagely attack nature,” says the document from Soeci.
Soeci points out that these excesses occur when temperatures are showing a tendency to increase and rainfall decreases as a result of seasonal changes. Heat and drought make conditions more conducive to an increase in forest fires, most of which are started by unscrupulous humans.
The Society demanded that the environmental authorities take the necessary measures to prevent these acts of environmental depredation from being repeated. Furthermore, they demanded that those responsible be prosecuted. They called on the public to prevent further destruction of nature, remedy it, and not damage the environment.
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Diario Libre
22 June 2020