Environmentalist calls Environment chief ‘innocent’

Santo Domingo.- Prominent environmentalist Eleuterio Martinez on Wednesday called Environment minister Bautista Rojas ‘innocent’ to the reality of the destruction ocuuring at Sierra de Baoruco National Park (southwest) as the ecological organization Grupo Jaragua denounced recently.

He said from the plains of Oviedo to the Haitian border, Dominican land barons hire locals and Haitians to “devastate” the protected area.

He said Rojas should visit the areas next to the towns of Aguas Negras, Mencia and Altagracia, “to see the level of devastation occurring at Sierra de Baoruco.”

“Rojas doesn’t understand the reach of the destruction including the fact that there’s a plantation of avocadoes for export,” Martinez said, calling what’s occurring in Sierra de Baoruco and Los Haitises National (northeast) parks a tragedy, which demands action by the Environment Ministry.

The author of several environmental works also challenged Rojas to explain how the new limits expand the surface area of Los Haitises, “when in fact it reduces the land area while increasing the marine border.”

Interviewed on Color Vision Channel 9, Martinez called the extraction of sand and gravel at quarries in the northern mountain range (Septentrional) near Santiago “regretful, because you can see how the bulldozers are perched atop the hills, devastating the surroundings of the peaks,” of Diego de Ocampo mountain.