Conservation lessons from Cuba: Connecting science and policy

The island of Cuba and surrounding cays are a major repository of biodiversity in the Caribbean archipelago. Although Cuba is widely recognized for its high biodiversity and endemism, much of the country's conservation experiences have been overlooked by the global conservation scientific community. Here we particularly highlight decades of governance efforts that built and strengthened forest and biodiversity protection policies, resulting in the second largest rate of forest cover recovery worldwide, doubling of both marine and terrestrial protected area networks in recent years, as well as developing a unique agroecological matrix management. These conservation strategies combined with the constraints on infrastructure development as a result of the decades long U.S. embargo, has had the indirect result of placing Cuba in a unique position in the Caribbean region. Nevertheless, despite these advances, significant part of the Cuban biota suffers from deforestation and habitat degradation. Major threats include booming tourism, spread of introduced species, climate change and increasing frequency and intensity of storms and hurricanes associated to global warming. We also point out for Cuba's future challenges, as well as lessons that could be applied in other tropical countries.