Another even more devastating fire in the masaya volcano national park

By Paulette
The most recent fire/s started on the 10th April and burned for nearly 3 weeks. To begin with it affected the area around the Santiago crater which is the most famous part for tourists with its reputation, given to it by Spanish conquistadores, as the gates of hell. This area is mostly grassland. Though sad that in itself would not have been a tragedy since this grows back in a year or two.
The really sad bit was when the fires started in the woodland areas. By day 5 there were several fires and some of them were in places very difficult to access so it was nearly impossible to fight them. This woodland is Pacific dry tropical forest, of which only 2% of the original remains world wide. It is (hopefully still is!!!) home to a group of white faced monkeys (we were actually considering releasing the 4 mariposa monkeys there before this happened!), a family of coyotes, several species of small wild cat, many different birds including the famous parakeet that nests within the live very smoky crater, also popular with tourists. About 125 species of butterfly have been documented,  with  a dozen or so unknown anywhere else. There are also hundreds of bats living in caves,a very popular tourist spot!

We don’t yet know the final extent of the damage but some park guards have unofficially estimated 25% of the woodland burnt out. It is an incredible disaster……
We also don’t know for sure how the fire started but it was certainly aggravated by the drier rainy seasons we have been having and the higher then usual temperatures (climate change of course). Plus Nicaragua’s resources for fighting such disasters are severely limited.No planes for example and only very short hosepipes!

The mariposa helped as much as we possibly could. Right from day one we sent out brigades of up to 20 men and women. We also bought a lot of  fire fighting equipment, hired trucks, sent in tankers of water and even bought boots for the fire fighters as their shoes melted in the heat.

We even sent out watermelons, as well as drinking water every day to try and avoid dehydration. We have posted a lot of pics of this on facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Mariposa-Escuela-de-Espa%C3%B1ol/226752447353756

I cannot tell you how sad it was to be there (I spent day after day at the fire). But now I feel strongly that I want to be as positive as possible. So I am in communication with the park authorities about using the trees we have been growing in our nursery (obviously those appropriate) and looking for volunteer who would like to experience of helping us with this.

New beginnings!! Above some of the tree seedlings in our nursery which we are hoping to plant out in the burnt forest. So if anyone is intersted to volunteer for this (it will be hot sweaty work) then please get in touch with us.