Mérida, Yucatán — Rules protecting Scorpion Reef are going to be more stringent, said the director of the Arrecife Alacranes Protected Natural Area.
Cristóbal Cáceres G. Cantón reported that the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas is working on updating the zone’s management and control program to establish stricter measures on activities allowed and prohibited in this one that is a protected natural area.
Known locally as the Arrecife Alacranes, the coral reef 130 kilometers off Progreso’s coast is a national park and has been part of the United Nations Biosphere Reserve since 2006.
In the last 20 years the park has suffered 11 boat strandings that have damaged fragile terrain. And recent hurricane activity has damaged the ecosystem further, he said.
Given this, starting in October, students of Marine Biology of the Autonomous University of Yucatan will spend a year launching various social participation tasks aimed at restoring threatened coral species.
These are four students from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Science who were winners of the “Be impulsão ideas” Bepensa Foundation challenge: Alejandra González Mata, Sirma Vega Gueorguieva, Andrea Marina Sánchez López and Luis Carlos Gasca Peralta.
The UADY Foundations, represented by its president Ignacio Cejudo Valencia and Bepensa, with its holder Fernando Ponce Díaz, signed a collaboration agreement with a 300,000-peso first-place prize
With this the students of the Uady will cultivate nurseries in the Arrecife Alacranes National Park.
