The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, defended the preservation of the environment, as well as the Venezuelan ecosystems where the spectacled bear lives.
“Priority conservation of the environment, national parks (…) to provide future generations with a green country, a beautiful, preserved country. Defend the Amazon, the Andes, our mountains, the rivers, the parks, the lakes (…)”, commented the first national president in this regard.
In this Monday’s edition of program “With Maduro +”, the head of state learned about the “Guaramacal Andean Bear” project, which seeks to care for the native South American plantigrade species.
During the section: “Knowing A”, the production engineer in agroecosystems, Marcos Hidalgo, was introduced, who highlighted Venezuela as one of the 10 most megadiverse countries on the planet.
“With a singularity of species, genes and ecosystems that position it at the top of the biodiversity list. One of those species is the spectacled bear, a species of ours and unique, ”he stressed.
Andean Bear Guaramacahe
Hidalgo commented on the “Oso Andino Guaramacal” project that has been underway since 2016 and is accompanied by the team of the National Parks Institute (Inparques).
He added that since 2018 a mechanism called “Camera Trap” has been used, a non-invasive research method, which involves a camera with infrared sensors that allow wildlife to be monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
He explained that they are located in the Guaramacal National Park and the Calderas Branch, created on August 1, 2021 -Pachamama Day- by President Maduro to legally protect this natural space.
environmental preservation
Hidalgo pointed out that there is a set of alliances between government institutions, private companies, universities and other organizations dedicated to the preservation of nature.
“We do scientific work in the national parks,” he said, while rural education was established in the communities with the implementation of “bear festivals”; celebration aimed at children with educational nuances, where they deliver self-teaching materials on the spectacled bear.
The specialist specified that in Venezuela there are 1,546 spectacled bears, approximately, while the Camera Trap study has allowed 36 bears to be tracked.
Ramal de Calderas National Park
The head of state asked to attend to all the “beautiful fight that these young people are carrying out” to preserve the bear, nature, fauna and for the conservation of Venezuela.
In that order of ideas, he asked the Minister of Popular Power for Ecosocialism, Josué Lorca, to support “all these wonderful people who fight for the conservation of the environment, for the conservation and care of special animals that could be in danger of extinction such as the spectacled bear”.
In this regard, the head of the Ecosocialism portfolio assured that it is essential to preserve all endangered Venezuelan species.
He stressed that the importance of the Ramal de Calderas National Park is to protect the spectacled bear, “because one of its main problems is the fragmentation of its habitat.”
As a solution, Lorca highlighted that the park “came to connect the entire corridor from the state of Lara to Táchira”, spaces regularly inhabited by the species.
Bear, people and coffee
The engineer Marcos Hidalgo showed the sustainable rural development that is taking place in some communities with the brand “Oso, gente y café”, another plan that seeks to include people in the preservation of the Venezuelan plantigrade, with the support of the Trujillo state government .
In this regard, the governor of the Andean entity, Gerardo Márquez, in the Urdaneta municipality there is also an existence of the spectacled bear, and stressed that the species is the typical animal of the region.
“We have to go to the preservation of this species (…) We have been making an effort so that, the spectacled bear, in the coming years we can say that we have preserved it for future generations,” he said.
