Organizations, community leaders and natural environmentalists asked the Environmental authorities to pay attention to the occupations of individuals that are occurring rapidly in the Baní Dunes, in the area near the town of Las Calderas.
The Dunas area, where dozens of homes built by individuals can be seen, is located between the old (original) town of Las Calderas and the place known as Rancho Mar, southwest of the town, about 800 meters from the coastal area.
Recently, Listín reporters, along with a commission of residents and environmentalists from Las Calderas, concerned about this problem, on a tour of the trails of the protected area (Sectoral Law of Protected Areas No. 202-04), heard at noon, the sound of electric saws cutting wood and hammers hammering for a new home right in the heart of this ecological park.
Wilson Medina, upon observing the situation, pointed out two new homes and, to the north of the place, about 200 meters away, another that was completed less than a month ago, while in another one could hear the saw cutting wood and the hammering in the one that was finishing construction.
Iguana population decreases
A small hamlet was also observed on top of sandy promontories, among olive trees, mangroves, bayahondas and other varieties of trees and shrubs endemic to this natural park, which until now is made up of around twenty houses built of zinc and wood, among other materials.
Local environmentalists, goat breeders and beekeepers assured that even in this village there are foreign migrants (some who live here and others who take care of agricultural properties and homes), who are destroying the population of rhinoceros iguanas (native), who marry them to eat them.
On Holy Monday, during the tour, Medina said that they had walked for four hours in the park area and did not see a single iguana, when on other occasions 10 and 15 of these reptiles are observed in the first five or ten minutes of walking through this Félix Servio Doucodray Scientific Reserve.
Barbed wire fences persist
Further into the Dunes, as in their buffer areas, in the place that environmentalists, goat breeders and beekeepers identify as La Laguneta, properties fenced with barbed wire and cyclone mesh are also reported, some already demolished, in part, by members of the Navy and park rangers of this Natural Monument.
But, despite the actions of the authorities, infrastructure built in several places is still observed.
Serious ecological threat
Further southwest of the town, on the route to Rancho Mar, within the Dunes there are recently closed lots with fences built in cement blocks and metal security gates, which together with the practice of conuquismo generate ecological damage and a serious threat to this emblematic and unique ecological system of Baní, the country, and in the Caribbean region.
