Related videos:
The Forest Rangers declared the forest fire that has been consuming areas of the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park in the municipality of Yateras, Guantánamo province, controlled this Thursday, according to reporting by the ranger corps.
The fire, originating in the Ojito de Agua area, came to affect approximately 600 hectares before being brought under control, primarily impacting scrubland and nearly a hundred hectares of forest, according to the information from Dr. Jesús Martín Pérez, the CITMA delegate in Guantánamo.
A previous report from July 1 described the extinguishing conditions as "very complex" and counted around 200 hectares affected; the figure nearly tripled before the efforts managed to halt the advance.
The fire was divided into three main fronts. The brigades employed the creation of firebreaks and the backburning technique to eliminate combustible material and stop the spread of the flames.
The proximity of the Jaguaní River, located about a kilometer from the active perimeter, was also crucial in containing the disaster, as explained by Martín Pérez.
The efforts involved a combined participation of members of the Guantánamo and Holguín Forest Rangers, personnel from the Ministry of the Interior, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, workers from the protected area, the Civil Defense, and authorities from the municipality of Yateras. The teams covered 16 kilometers of affected terrain, where much of the vegetation was left devastated.
Investigations into the cause of the fire remain ongoing. Authorities point to contextual factors including high temperatures, thunderstorms, and the persistence of illegal activities, particularly the illegal gold mining in the area, which has surged in eastern Cuba over the last decade, with estimates of up to 20,000 people seeking gold in the region.
That background carries direct weight: the largest fire ever recorded in the history of the park, which occurred between April and May 2021 in the same area of Ojito de Agua, devastated between 1,823 and 1,896 hectares, and its cause was officially confirmed as illegal mining. In September 2025, the People's Municipal Court of Yateras sentenced five individuals to prison terms ranging from one year and six months to two years and seven months for illegal gold extraction within the park itself.
The Alejandro de Humboldt National Park has been a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site since 2001, spanning 70,680 hectares between Holguín and Guantánamo, and is home to over 1,500 plant species, of which more than 905 are endemic to Cuba.
This incident is the first recorded in the province of Guantánamo in 2026, during a national season that had already accumulated 111 wildfires and 3,174 damaged hectares between January and April, a figure significantly lower than the 290 wildfires and 9,456 affected hectares during the same period in 2025.
Filed under: