Morovis Community Preserves Its Forest and Makes Money Thanks to Ecotourism

In Morovis, a town in the center of Puerto Rico’s main island, lies the Las Cabachuelas nature reserve, a green labyrinth of approximately 1,950 acres. This place— known for its numerous caves—holds pre-colonial stories, rock art and petroglyphs, plants studied by paleobotanists, unique fauna in the Caribbean, and many other stories of what life was like in Puerto Rico before Spanish colonization and subsequent industrialization.

These stories can be heard on one of the many tours offered by the Cabachuelas Project of the Cabachuelas Workers Cooperative, a community-based cooperative co-founded by Morovis residents in 2018 to protect and manage the land where the nature reserve is located. Today, the cooperative has positioned itself as an alternative and effective model that contributes to conserving the natural environment and the mountain area’s sustainable economic development.

Las Cabachuelas is an area of high ecological value, with a large number of trees that help sequester carbon dioxide and preserve the island’s biodiversity. Today, it serves as an ecotourism area that supports eight people employed by the Cabachuelas Project and the cooperative. These people also help residents and visitors of Puerto Rico learn about the natural and cultural heritage of the archipelago,  thanks to their ecotours and  various social development and service works.

Since 2019, they have managed a symposium that highlights these positive impacts on environmental conservation. In November 2024, I was able to visit the sixth edition of this symposium, which has created opportunities for the environmental well-being of the Las Cabachuelas Natural Reserve and the social well-being of Morovis.

That morning, on November 18, I was driving towards Morovis. Little by little, I noticed more closely the mogotes (limestone hills) with their distinctive limestone reliefs, embraced by lianas and various plants. I was already entering the dense, dark green of that collection of limestone mountains—which make up the karst belt of Puerto Rico, a geographic region where the subsoil is formed by soluble rocks such as limestone. The dissolution of these rocks creates a characteristic landscape with caves, rivers, and springs. From above, they can be seen as a labyrinth of bulging and leafy walls. I was seeing them now from the front, from my car.

They could still be spotted from the urban area in Morovis. It was November 18, 2024, and the festive air was beginning, the distinctive cold of the Puerto Rican mountains that is eagerly awaited, given the rising temperatures that Puerto Rico and the other Caribbean islands are suffering. I parked near its plaza to go to the Oscar Rodríguez amphitheater, where the "Sixth Symposium: Cabachuelas, Ecotourism, and Archeology" would take place.

In that room, there were over seventy people, including residents of the neighborhoods that make up the reserve, students, teachers, researchers, and many other people interested in learning about the work being done in collaboration with the cooperative. "This symposium is a unique opportunity to connect, strengthen collective action, and continue promoting community participation as a key tool to build a sustainable, supportive, and oppression-free future for our archipelago," said José M. Santos Valderrama, president of the board of directors of the cooperative.

"We invite you to use this event to collaborate, share knowledge, and reaffirm the need to work together to protect natural systems, advocate for the respect of environmental public policies, defend the stability of our communities, and promote the historical legacies that define our identity and our future," Santos Valderrama continued.

It is worth noting that the work done by the Cabachuelas Project, like other projects in Puerto Rico and in various places, reflects how successful community-based groups can be in managing and conserving natural areas in arrangement with the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, the government of Puerto Rico’s executive department in charge of protecting, conserving, and managing natural resources.

Many times, to conserve a space, the people who inhabit or depend on it are ignored. Currently, the collaborative agreement they maintain with the government has helped insert Morovis residents into protecting and revitalizing Las Cabachuelas; to validate and respect the influence that people have on the natural environment where they live.

Santos Valderrama emphasized that inserting the people from the neighborhoods where the reserve is located, and from other places in Morovis, has been key in the conservation process. In addition, Las Cabachuelas "has a vital importance for the production of oxygen, carbon sequestration, temperature control, and protection of native biodiversity and groundwater that guarantee quality of life for the communities," he explained. The cooperative has achieved ecotourism, educational, and social development projects that have positively impacted the municipality, developing jobs for residents and awareness about sustainability. These achievements represent an example for other places that seek to achieve a balance between conservation and economic management.

At the symposium, various works that have been carried out with different communities and organizations were shared. For example, in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico in Arecibo and Professor Ángel Acosta Colón, the reserve’s caves have been studied using powerful radars resulting in virtual reality and three-dimensional printing programs that have allowed people with mobility challenges or blindness to enjoy this protected natural resource.

The event also commemorated the memory of Roberto Martínez Torres, a Morovis resident who passed away in 2024, and whose archaeological work underlined the historical and natural value of that area. Professor Reniel Rodríguez of the University of Puerto Rico in the Utuado campus, also an archaeologist, emphasized the love and sense of belonging that Martínez Torres had and expressed towards his town and towards Las Cabachuelas. Although "karst," "mogotes," "caves," "conservation," "education," among other related words, would be the main protagonists in these presentations, all of them, and others, were accompanied by the word "community," thus reflecting the love and sense of belonging necessary to create a bond with the ecosystem.

To achieve this, Santos Valderrama said, was the importance of integrating as many people from Morovis and Puerto Rico as possible into the management and conservation processes of natural areas.

"Before, there were clandestine dumps [in Las Cabachuelas]. Chemicals that were contaminating, the sewer emptied into the reserve," he said. "That has decreased significantly. There is a greater sense of belonging, of awareness towards caring for the environment and of understanding how my actions affect others, my neighbor of flesh and blood and the reserve."

The cooperative offers various ecotourism guides and works on different outreach projects in the neighborhoods of Morovis, in schools, and with other organizations.

Organizing as a cooperative, as Myriam Rivera expressed in a video published near the date of the symposium, has allowed them to generate income that sustains the organization and its employees, while also allowing them to expand their outreach and conservation activities.

It has also allowed them to sustain a horizontal and participatory decision-making process that reflects their commitment with the community. José Santos Valderrama told me that, even within the challenges and obstacles due to the lack of structural and institutional support and some economic limitations, they have been able to forge a path that allows them to conserve and protect the area. "Yes, the economic activity [that we generate] is important to do the rest of the work, but if we do not protect that natural system, then nothing else will be possible," he added.

The symposium ended with an invitation to continue strengthening ties and collaborations to continue making visible that  conservation efforts that lead to economic and social benefits, within the context of climate change, are possible. "There are people who are already doing what we are doing here," Valderrama explained. "The power is in us, in the communities.  But without giving up the need for institutions that respect this work, that support this work." He stressed that there are contradictions and complexities in the work they do, as in any other, that sometimes generates tensions with the government administration (and regarding this, he spoke more about in a recent interview with Bianca Graulau).

In the end, Santos Valderrama commented that it is important to "[build] from the knowledge and experiences that people have, (...) from there,  continue working and advocating for those possible futures."

I left that green labyrinth wanting to return to explore Las Cabachuelas and thinking that what I learned and saw during this symposium is an example of what is possible in our islands. And, keeping in mind that, as Valderrama said, we should not give up the possibility of "living in a prosperous, supportive, sustainable country, understanding that there must be a balance between the economy and ecology."

This article was originally published by Yale Climate Connections.

The author is a social scientist and writer, based in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico. His writing covers food, the environment, science, and policy.