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Biodiversity above all

Biodiversity above all

To preserve flora and fauna of the Yungas region in Jujuy is vital, since it is home to half of the plants and animals in Argentina.

 

It may sound like a contradiction. Yungas take less than 2% of Argentinian territory, but it is home of half of the species of plants and animals in the country. It encompasses more than 200 tree spices, 80 varieties of ferns, more than 100 mammal species, 500 aviary species, and 30 species of frogs and toads. It is a natural refugee for endangered species like the jaguar, the tapir, the pecarí, green macaw, the Amazona tucumana parrot, and the Cairina moschata duck.

These areas are vital to the environment and the biodiversity preservation. This is why productive activities that produce economy resources that enable to improve the life quality of the communities must reduce the pressure on periurban natural systems, in order to improve the opportunities for biodiversity preservation.

Therefore, if these economic activities were to disappear, the whole landscape, along with its regional natural integrity would be affected.

In the Yungas preservation area, Ledesma together with ProYungas, installed motion sensitive cameras to study the biodiversity in 60 different spots. When an animal gets close, the camera automatically takes a picture. By doing this, researches gather first-hand information about the presence of diverse species and their use of the territory on their day-to-day life.

On the other side, almost half of the energetic matrix from Ledesma, in Jujuy, comes from renewable sources, such as vegetal residue from sugarcane and eucalyptus energetic harvesting. For each sugarcane or citric harvested hectare, Ledesma donates two hectares for native forest and natural systems for its conservation. This was possible thanks to the land-use planning designed by ProYungas ten years ago together with Ledesma. This land-use planning is based on a general study of Ledesma landscape in the regional context, determining scientifically the location where an agricultural transformation could take place and where natural flora should be preserved.

With this planning, the company will preserve the nature of 100 thousand hectares of native forests to future generations.