Rehabilitation and Reclamation in Moa, Cuba
Decades before Cuba’s Alejandro de Humboldt National Park became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001, the state-owned predecessor of the Moa Joint Venture received a concession to develop a mineral deposit within the park. Preliminary, small-scale exploration work was carried out on this deposit in the 1970s and 1990s, but none since then.
In 2008, the Moa Joint Venture officially relinquished its concession. Subsequently, a long-term biodiversity management plan to restore the impacted areas in the park was executed collaboratively by the Moa Joint Venture, Cuban regulatory agencies and the Park Authority. In 2017, the rehabilitation work in Alejandro de Humboldt National Park concluded.
The reclamation team at the Moa Nickel Site has been working for many years on restoring areas in and around the mine site to meet the requirements outlined in our environmental permit. This restoration work includes testing new methods for erosion control and different plant species for survivability. The soil around Moa is naturally quite acidic, meaning that not all vegetation can flourish there, but our highly educated team is experienced in reforestation and reconstruction for such areas.
In 2020, teams rehabilitated 40 hectares, reforested 40 hectares, and conducted maintenance on approximately 450 hectares of existing plantations. Activities during the year included removal of invasive plant species and garbage, new planting and pruning. Additionally, to control sedimentation and provide erosion control, 30 sedimentation ponds were constructed and 25 were maintained. The aim is to achieve the conditions required to return these sites to the country’s natural forest state, which in turn will allow the company to withdraw the lands successfully rehabilitated from the current mining concessions and return them to government control.