Caguanes National Park is a national park

National park

A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...

 in Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

. It is located in the Yaguajay

Yaguajay, Cuba

Yaguajay is a municipality and city in the Sancti Spíritus Province of Cuba. It is located in the northern part of the province, and borders the Bay of Buena Vista to the north....

 municipality in the northern part of Sancti Spíritus Province

Sancti Spíritus Province

Sancti Spíritus is one of the provinces of Cuba. Its capital is the identically named Sancti Spíritus. Another major city is Trinidad.The southern coast of the province is flat, but the western portion of Sancti Spíritus province is mountainous. The southeast has numerous mangroves and swamps...

, on the northern (atlantic

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

) coast of Cuba.

It is established around the Caguanes peninsula and includes 10 small cay

Cay

A cay , also spelled caye or key, is a small, low-elevation, sandy island formed on the surface of coral reefs. Cays occur in tropical environments throughout the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans , where they provide habitable and agricultural land for hundreds of thousands of people...

s (Cayos de Piedra) that reach out in the Bay of Buena Vista

Bay of Buena Vista

The Bay of Buena Vista is a bay on Cuba's northern Atlantic shore. It is located in the northern part of the provinces of Sancti Spíritus, Villa Clara and Ciego de Ávila, between mainland Cuba and the archipelago that lines its northern coast....

 (a Ramsar Convention

Ramsar Convention

The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands, i.e., to stem the progressive encroachment on and loss of wetlands now and in the future, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultural,...

 site), as well as the Guayaberas swamps and mangrove

Mangrove

Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...

s. The park covers an area of 204.87 km² (79.1 sq mi).

Conservation

The coastal landscape is characterized by caves, arches and niches that open to the sea. A total of 79 caves were numbered in the area.

The ecosystem consists of more than 200 species, 24 of them endemic. 112 species of birds nest in the marsh and coastal area. A large population of mariposa bat

Bat

Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera "hand" and pteron "wing") whose forelimbs form webbed wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of true and sustained flight. By contrast, other mammals said to fly, such as flying squirrels, gliding possums, and colugos, glide rather than fly,...

s is present in the Tres Dolinas cave. A decline in migratory aquatic birds (spoonbill

Spoonbill

Spoonbills are a group of large, long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, which also includes the Ibises.All have large, flat, spatulate bills and feed by wading through shallow water, sweeping the partly opened bill from side to side...

s, flamingo

Flamingo

Flamingos or flamingoes are gregarious wading birds in the genus Phoenicopterus , the only genus in the family Phoenicopteridae...

s, pelican

Pelican

A pelican, derived from the Greek word πελεκυς pelekys is a large water bird with a large throat pouch, belonging to the bird family Pelecanidae....

s) nesting in the marshes was registered here. The closure of three sugar mills reduced the pollution in swamps and bay, and numbers were increasing as of 2007.

35 archeology sites are also conserved here, most of them representing cave dwellers. Cave murals can be found in the partially submerged cave system.