Tip of the Week: Cuba’s Forests

Posted in Exhibitions, Gardening Tips, The Orchid Show on March 1 2010, by Sonia Uyterhoeven

Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education.

We are celebrating Cuba this year in The Orchid Show. While Cuba lays claims to great national parks such as La Güira National Park and Sierra del Rosario Biosphere Reserve, which houses the exquisite Jardín Botánico Orquideario Soroa (Soroa Orchid Botanical Garden), historically, the island wasn’t immune to the ravages of colonization and industrialization.

When Christopher Columbus sailed into Cuba in 1492, he encountered a tropical paradise covered with old-growth forests full of Caribbean mahogany, walnut, ebony, cedar, pine, and oak. This vast arboreal expanse was a paradise for Cuba’s native fauna and flora, including orchids. But the ideal wasn’t to last, giving way to deforestation and sugar cultivation.

At one time, according to https://www.thetoolboss.com, the felling of trees was regulated by the Royal Forest Reserve, which prohibited the indiscriminate felling of trees so that specimens could reach a certain height to supply shipbuilders with timber for masts, keels, and hulls for the Royal Navy.

But a greater threat to the environment and its ecological communities existed: a wholesale deforestation of the island by the sugarcane industry.

Large wooded areas were cleared and burned for sugarcane plantations and its incumbent needs: mills, cabins for workers—the labor-intensive industry historically was based on slave labor—garden areas for crops, and firewood.

Traditionally, when sugarcane was harvested, a wooden crusher was used to extract the cane juice and the extract was cooked until it evaporated, leaving molasses and sugar crystals as the byproducts.

Growing sugarcane—which was brought to the region by Columbus—was a highly lucrative business. Local crop farmers often changed over to sugarcane if a mill was nearby. Sugarcane rapidly depletes the nutrients in the soil. Farmers improved their production by amending the soil with manure, but when faced with infertile ground and a shortage of firewood for the mill, landowners would often move their plantations and colonize new areas.

Sugar was thought to be one of the most valuable commodities in the European trade. The Caribbean islands were producing up to 90 percent of the sugar consumed by Europeans. While attempts were made in the 17th and 18th centuries to create checks and balances to preserve the island’s natural beauty, the efforts were unable to slow down the industry’s growth. By 1815, many of the forestry restrictions had been lifted in favor of the booming sugarcane industry.

Eventually, the sugarcane industry slowed down with the abolition of slavery (the loss of a cheap workforce) and the discovery of the sugar beet. A local source of sugar meant that Europeans with a sweet tooth didn’t have to send cargo ships across the Atlantic to get their fix.

In the late-19th century an effective reforestation campaign was launched that required 5–15 percent of private lands to remain as forest, established protected areas, and banned or restricted the deforestation of certain trees such as ebony, cork, and walnut. Replacement strategies were also implemented where landowners were obligated to plant a new tree upon a removal.

It is not just the trees that disappear when a forest is felled. The decimation of natural habitats effects native fauna and flora alike. Plants live in communities and are dependent on one another for their survival. There isn’t a better example of this than the epiphytic orchids that you see in The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower. Come join us for a moment in a renewed tropical paradise.