The Region of the Anvil (El Yunque) is threatened, not protected

pfranco@claridadpuertorico.com
When some weeks ago the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico in Washington, Luis Fortuño, boasted of a federal law that alegadamente will protect other 10 thousand land acres in the area of the Toro in the Anvil, nothing was said of the ominous implication that blossoming on the zone.
Hundredth Aleida, lawyer who has dedicated itself to question a series of conservation laws which alegadamente they hide behind himself the intention to operate those zones instead of conserving them, alluded to other laws which they apply to that area, to prove that to the margin of a law other destinies for those lands will be determined.
The alleged wild conservation of protected lands of the Toro in the new law signed the past first of December of 2005 by American president George Bush would suppose to jeopardize like wild zone those 10 thousand acres of the Toro like zone of greater protection for the fauna and flora of the region. Also, among others, the guarantee of conservation of the natural habitat of cotorra Puerto Rican in danger of extincióny that the removal of materials will be made manually that is necessary for that conservation.
The contradictionBut it is not thus. Rye alleges that the approved law will have the effect to create in the zone an experimental area and not of conservation since it has been said. That the own laws are contradicted when saying that if the intention of lands is miner, it will authorize the operation of heavy equipment for excavation, removal, transportation, installation of lines and facilities in the region of the Toro.
In addition, it denounced that the process to delimit the area at issue and that had to be preceded by a map of demarcations of the zone before being approved, it is part of the test that it did not take to public views nor to the knowledge of people in Puerto Rico because knew that it would be questioned.
According to Rye, that it wanted to signal alert on the true intentions of the federals, to that region of the Anvil Title 16 of sections 1131 to the 1134 of the Code of the United States was applied to him that in section 1132 it establishes that it has to have available the public a map and the demarcations of the zone to protect before being approved any legislation. That process was not followed.
Rye maintains that the law was approved to backs of the town and public views were never made, and that the only participation that was was the one of members of the present governmental administration which never they indicated the contradiction that represents that an area of experiments in the Experimental Forest is authorized of
Luquillo "which authorizes that it leaves to residual equipment and permanent chemical and biological changes". In addition, that would also apply to the region the law of mines that in the section 1133 and that in the new law which really does is to register that area in the law of patent of mines.
Another one of the circumstances to that it alluded to Rye is that while Fortuño, speaking of the new law, expressed that the rainwater that receives the Anvil is of more than 100 billion gallons to the year, did not notice that this one would be received to them to those who benefits to receive it in that zone. Thus, Pablo said, stated in the press Cross, director of the Anvil, that affirmed that the federal government was prepared to receive that rainwater. "That water falls to him to the federal government of the sky and nothing costs to him, but they want it to receive", denounced Rye.
The implication for the Toro of all those repercussions, assured Rye, is that test that after just approved law are interests greater than is not those of conservation. It alleged that "who will have the jurisdiction of that area they will be organizations like the National Science Foundation, Long Term Environmental Research Proyect, (supported by universities like Old Dominion University who is a military university), Department of Energy, (for that the new director of the UPR in Cayey, Mr. ram Lamba, made investigations in the Anvil by means of the scholarship Oak Ridge), the Institute of Tropical Dasonomía, that in the 2004 deforested a land cord in the Anvil, applied to electricity and naftaleno to him weekly to experience the effects of an ecological disaster and many other organizations nonpublished".
Rye added in addition that the past 5 of August also was approved the Energy Policy Act that in one of its sections allows to look for natural gas and petroleum in all the forest reserves, which would include the Anvil.