Invasive Species and Wildfire Prevention

Protectores de Cuencas, Inc. (PDC) is a science and community based nonprofit organization helping to restore and protect watersheds across Puerto Rico. Managing wildfires is an important global and national issue to tackle, particularly in the southern region of Puerto Rico. The invasive grass species colonizing disturbed areas, serve as fuel to forest fires during the dry season, creating a fire cycle as the same areas easily ignite year after year. It is the project team's intention to permanently restore the impacted areas to break the fire cycle. This project aims to control and minimize invasive grasses such as, buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris) and guinea grass (Megathyrsus maximusthat) in affected susceptible fire areas of the Guánica Dry Forest (GDF), a United Nations World Biosphere Reserve. These invasive species have a wide range of spreading capacity and this interferes with the regeneration of native species. Control of invasive grass species will be followed by a reforestation project of 4 acres of the 25 affected acres on target forest patches across the southern-most GDF boundary along Road 333 with mature native tree and shrub species that are proven to be more tolerant to fires. This project aims to tackle the ecological need of reducing the threats of forest fires, but also intends to have a social impact on the local communities.