Cuba Says Forest Cover Rises to One Fifth of Island
8/10/99
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Title: Cuba says forest cover rises to one fifth of island
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 10, 1999
(Reuters) - Cuba said on Tuesday successful environmental policies had
increased the island's forests to cover 21.5 percent of national
territory, up from 13.4 percent before President Fidel Castro's 1959
revolution.
Agriculture Ministry officials said the Castro government had sown
1.24 million acres (half a million hectares) of trees in the last four
decades, particularly in the mountainous zones of the Sierra Maestra,
Escambray, and Sierra de los Organos.
Cuba was nearly 90 percent covered by trees at the time of the 16th
century Spanish Conquest of Latin America, but farming, mining, sugar-
planting, and other activities destroyed the Caribbean nation's
forests over the centuries.
``While in other nations of the American continent, thousands of plant
species disappear due to indiscriminate chopping and burning of
forests, in Cuba indigenous and other varieties are preserved with the
help of biotechnology,'' said the Agriculture Ministry report, carried
on state media.
Independent green activists in Cuba, who are sharply critical of
Castro's environmental record, were not immediately available to
comment on the ministry's assessment.
Cuba insists that, unlike many other countries around the world, it it
is faithfully carrying out all the agreements of the 1992 Rio Earth
Summit.