This year, the organization Amigos de Sian Ka’an will carry out the task of reforesting 100 hectares of mangrove in a natural protected area in Tulum, informed Gonzalo Merediz Alonso, general director of the conservationist organization with decades of experience in the area.
The 100 hectares correspond to the 400 hectares targeted for restoration, which are deteriorated or dead after attempts of development in the region. The mangrove is located within the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve, the most important protected natural area in Quintana Roo.
According to Merediz, the damage began more than four decades ago, when it was not yet decreed as a natural area and 400 hectares of mangrove were killed after a breach was opened to build a road.
“This year we are going for 100 hectares, to reforest and, above all, to open connections between the mangroves and their bodies of water, so that restoration can also happen on its own,” said the biologist. He trusts that, due to the work that began last August, the channels that have been opened for interconnection will simplify the natural restoration.
4 million pesos in investment
The reforestation is being done in coordination with Cinvestav and Conanp, through funding for the 400 hectares of 4 million pesos granted by the North American Wetlands Conservation Council, from the United States.
Since 2014, when the management program for the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve was issued as a protected natural area, the corresponding affectation of the El Playón Recovery Subzone (SR) has been described, which has an area of 116.5 hectares, formed by a polygon.
It is located on the coastal strip that borders the Xamach Lagoon to the southeast of the rustic road that connects the site known as El Playón with the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto and the access control “Chumpón”.
This territory is distinguished by an alteration in the vegetation structure on the south side of the road, where the plant community is dominated by red mangrove, also called mangrove chaparro (Rhizopohra mangle), a species in the threatened category, included in the Mexican Official Standard Nom-059-Semarnat-2010, Environmental protection of Mexican native species of wild flora and fauna-Categories of risk and specifications for their inclusion, exclusion or change-List of species at risk, has been heavily impacted and in several places has disappeared due to the effect of the road built more than 40 years ago.
These works, according to the document, changed the water flows and connectivity of the area.
