Casa Pueblo in Adjuntas is initiating its 25th anniversary celebration with a local, national, and international campaign directed at having the UNESCO proclaim the Bosque del Pueblo a Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site.

We are inviting students, teachers, professors, labor unions, associations, groups, churches, and citizens at large to participate and invite others by sending their endorsement. To send your endorsement fill the form bellow and click on the send button. Click here to see a printable version of the petition.

New achievements support Casa Pueblo’s application

This concerted initiative is being launched because it has been three years since the application was submitted and there are further achievements that strengthen the basis for the application.

1. Generation and dissemination of information and achievements: Casa Pueblo, through its director, received a Goldman International Environmental Prize in 2002, having been selected among all the island nations of the world on the basis of 22 years of work in the defense of natural, cultural, and human resources. The award was widely publicized.

2. Environmental education and professional development: Casa Pueblo founded (2003) the Instituto Comunitario de Biodiversidad y Cultura (Community Institute for Biodiversity and Culture) through which collaboration agreements have been made with the Washington Irving elementary school in Adjuntas and the Mayagüez campus of the University of Puerto Rico to offer environmental education courses to elementary, secondary, and college level students.

3. Participatory democracy: Casa Pueblo submitted a bill to the legislature, and through an intensive participatory campaign achieved approval in 2003 for legislation appropriating $20 million in recurring funds to acquire land of significant ecological importance with a view to increasing the protected areas of the country from 5 to 10 %.

4. Regional planning: Casa Pueblo prepared and submitted a Conservation Plan for Sensitive Areas for Adjuntas and Adjoining Townships to the Planning Board, which approved the Plan in 2004. The Plan encompasses more than 36,000 acres in 11 townships and creates the first biological corridor in Puerto Rico, joining four forest reserves to the Bosque del Pueblo. This conservation strategy broadens the external transition zone of the proposed Biosphere Reserve and the mosaic of ecological systems, while also creating a regulatory plan for land use in the region.

5. Land Use Planning and Regulation: Casa Pueblo proposed community management of the Bosque La Olimpia in Adjuntas, which was achieved under an agreement with the Puerto Rico Department of Natural Resources at the end of 2004. The headwaters of the Río Grande de Arecibo, which provides drinking water to more than one million people who live in the area extending from Adjuntas to the San Juan Metropolitan Area, are located in this forest. The area also includes primary forest at an elevation of 3,200 feet and is the habitat of the broad-winged hawk (Buteo platypterus) and the sharp-shinned hawk (Accipiter striatus venato), which are both endangered species.


Benefits for Puerto Rico

The UNESCO proclamation of the Bosque del Pueblo as a Biosphere Reserve will result in significant benefits such as:


1. Broadening the scope of community management of the Bosque del Pueblo with the new goals that are part of a Biosphere Reserve, including the ecological corridor that we achieved in 2004. This new management, conservation, and monitoring component covers more than 36,000 acres of land in 11 townships and adds 4 forest reserves to the Bosque del Pueblo.

2. Breaking through isolation by bringing the issue of the tenuous environmental situation of Puerto Rico to the global stage. The Bosque del Pueblo will be part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves, which constitutes a tool for conserving the biological diversity and sustainable use of its components.

3. This innovative strategy reinforces the important community victory against the economic development project based on mining and the later achievement of transforming the zone into the Bosque del Pueblo (the People’s Forest) and the historic community management that we have carried out until now. It is of fundamental importance to close the doors even tighter against the specter of mining, so that it will never reappear, as happened so many times between 1960 and 1992.

The definition of a Biosphere Reserve

Biosphere Reserves are land, coastal or marine ecosystems that are recognized at the international level within the framework of the UNESCO Programme. They have been established to promote and demonstrate the balanced relationship between human beings and the biosphere. The Reserves strive to be sites of excellence for experimentation and demonstration of methods of conservation and sustainable development at a regional scale. They have three basic functions:

i. Conservation: to contribute to the conservation of landscapes, ecosystems, species, and genetic variety.
ii. Development: to promote sustainable economic and human development, from a social, cultural, and ecological perspective.
iii. Logistics support: to provide support for environmental demonstration, education, and training projects, as well as research and permanent observation regarding local, regional, national, and global conservation and sustainable development issues.

A World Network of Biosphere Reserves has been constituted by uniting the reserves for the purpose of making the management of the individual biosphere reserves more efficient and strengthening mutual knowledge, communication, and cooperation at the regional and international levels.

Alexis Massol-González
Director