Page 7 - aruba-today-20221213

a7
local Tuesday 13 december 2022
History of development has big impact on Aruba’s vegetation

ORANJESTAD – Giancarlo “Plants come and plants
Nunes, Conservation Man- go, surely on an island, and
ager of the Aruba National this is a natural process.
Park Foundation (FPNA) But what we see happen-
explained during a press ing worldwide and what is
conference that Aruba has being investigated, is that
a long history of develop- unique plant types are be-
ment, and there are many coming more unique, and
different forms of industry general plant types are be-
which all have an effect on coming more general, and
the local nature. we are seeing this a bit on
Aruba as well”, he said.
He indicated that for exam-
ple, aloe plantation, which Proosdij indicated that
in the past was located on they do not have concrete
a large portion of Aruba numbers yet to support this,
had its effect. Also during but they are aware of some
the times of colonization types of plants that disap-
there was development, peared or have almost dis-
and during this time, a lot appeared in Aruba, while a
of plants were cut down for lot of other new plants that
wood; at this time, goats, were found came from an
donkeys and horses were entirely different part of the
introduced as well. world, or have a big distri-
“Obviously when the plants bution area, from Florida to
are eliminated, it has a South America – these are
big impact because when plants that spread fast and
you eliminate some plants take it into account for the that survive.
in Aruba it takes years for future”, he highlighted. “So you see that the type
them to grow back, some- of different, unique plants
times it even takes centu- Dr. Andre van Proosdij from they are having a hard
ries,” he emphasized. Wageningen University and time. These are the types
Research (WUR) also ex- that really can find a place
Right now, Aruba’s lat- plained why Aruba’s indig- in a protection area in or-
est main industry, tourism, enous plants have disap- der for them to survive”, he
comes with different kinds peared while plants from said.q
of development, all of other regions, imported
which have an effect on plants remain and take Photographs of different
nature and the environ- over the place of the indig- Aruban landscapes from
ment. enous plants. https://www.facebook.
Nunes commented that com/arubanationalpark
the history of Aruba for the
past 500 years of develop-
ment is one of constant
change, and what has
to wonder precisely what
that change is. Luckily, now
they can publish informa-
tion using data from the
1990s and the investigation
they are currently carrying
out, at least they can say
something about the pe-
riod since the 1990s until
now.

Nunes added that they also
have some photographs
from the 1950s with which
they can make a compari-
son with current times, but
this doesn’t yield a lot of in-
formation. “But all that de-
velopment had an impact
on our vegetation, on our
nature. We need to realize
that we cannot just go do
anything and then hope
that it won’t bring change,
or that nature will not react
to it. It is important for us to
realize this right now and