Six months on, UCPN Güendá Urubó management plan has yet to be approved

The violation of the Güendá Urubó Natural Heritage Protection Unit (UCPN) is equivalent to the destruction of the Ambro National Park, the Lomas de Arena UCPN and all its buffer zones.

Damián Vaca, director of the Biodiversity Network, illustrated through his social networks and satellite maps the connectivity between the three protected areas (two provincial and one national), which form a regional water system.

Juan Calos Sauma from the water engineering company agrees with Vaca, which prepared a study on Güendá Urubó, as well as a management plan for this UCPN, a document submitted six months ago to then-Deputy Governor Mario Aguilera, the departmental Environmental Secretariat (Pablo Sauto) and the Natural Heritage Protection Directorate (Dicopan).

Another copy was sent to the German Cooperation Agency (GIZ), which funded the work and invested nearly $100,000 in the program.

On the importance of this work, Sauma said it is his tool for managing the UCPN as it establishes the regulatory framework on what can and cannot be done there, zoning, and so on.

“As long as there is no zoning, it’s up in the air and even if there is Law 208 that created Güendá Urubó, they can do anything, such as clearing, on the grounds that the zoning is not approved,” he clarified, saying that a similar situation also occurs in the ecological cordon, which has so far had no management plan and therefore no zoning for different uses.

“The only thing missing is the resolution of approval for its implementation. That’s it,” he said, recalling that the current governor was one of the main interests in defending that part of the city when the ABC highway, which would have bisected the UCPN, especially in its 2.

The definition of rules within Güendá Urubó, reflected in the five volumes of the plan, could hamper development, roads, mining and expansion in urban areas.

The management plan hides the ABC Highway route from Buena Vista to Polongo because it proposes an alternative road.

As for the areas approved within the UCPN buffer zone, those of Colinas del Urubó, Porongo, Mague, Maguecito, Las Cruces and Terebinto, which total 14,000 hectares, Sauma stressed that they cannot increase by “a single millimeter.”

He acknowledged that the document also includes a study of mining concessions that already exist in the region and that the proposal would slow their progress.

CC representative María José Salazar considered it worrying that the management plan had not been approved so far and said she had requested the technical forms and was waiting for the Ministry of Environment to confirm the date.

They assured in this office that they are already working on this issue. However, in the TCP, the state vice president, David Choquehuanca, asked for the annulment of the law that created all the UCPNs in Güendá and Santa Cruz.