Distrito de Conservación

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Distrito de conservación

Soil Conservation District Campo Alegre

WILD Campo Alegre Nature Reserve lies within a protected área, a so called “Soil Conservation District” (or Distrito de Conservacion de Suelos DCS):
The Soil Conservation District Campoalgre (Distrito de Conservación de Suelos Campoalegre, DCS) is a protected area located in the municipality of Santa Rosa de Cabal, Risaralda, Colombia, on the western slopes of the Central Andes. It lies within the buffer zone of Los Nevados National Natural Park, between 1,800 and 3,800 meters above sea level.

  1. The district covers an area of approximately 21,131 hectares, representing about 37% of the municipality’s territory. Campoalegre was officially declared a protected area in 2011 (Agreement No. 018 of June 17, 2011 by the CARDER Council) under the category of Soil Conservation District.

Its main conservation objectives are:

  • To protect the upper and middle basins of the Campoalegre and San Eugenio rivers, which supply drinking water to Santa Rosa de Cabal and neighboring municipalities.
  • To preserve high Andean forest ecosystems in their natural state, safeguarding one of the last remaining compact and biodiverse forest remnants in the region.
  • To halt ecosystem degradation and fragmentation processes and promote ecological restoration in highly affected areas, recovering forest and páramo vegetation cover.
  • To protect habitats of threatened, vulnerable, endemic, and rare species of flora and fauna that inhabit the area.

Administration of the district is shared between CARDER (Corporación Autónoma Regional de Risaralda) and the municipal management board.

This means that it is not legal to cut down forest and many other activities. However, cattle farming that was already present when the DCS was formed, continues. So, in reality, a large portion of this area has intensive cattle farms, and the pastures are fumigated and kept free of any tree growth.
WCA is now an important part of this protected area and we are working hard to include more cattle farms to our reserve, in order to restore the cloud forest.