Sea protection plan omits river mouth
Area is of great importance to seabirds and loggerhead turtles, say ecologists
A NATIONAL government plan to better protect the marine area between Alicante city and the southern border of the province with Murcia has excluded the mouth of the River Segura, ecologists have complained.
The associations of friends of the south Alicante wetlands ( AHSA) and Sierra Escalona ( ASE) insist that these 700 marine hectares are of great importance to seabirds and loggerhead turtles.
The project by the ministry for ecological transition ( formerly the environment) aims to improve conservation measures in seven Special Protection Areas for birds ( SPAs) and 10 marine Special Areas of Conservation ( SACs) in the Valencia region, as well as modifying their borders.
Its ultimate objective is to establish a ‘ coherent and effective’ marine site within the EU’s Natura 2000 network.
Two SPAs covering virtually the entire southern coastline of the province were declared in 2009, the Tabarca and Cabo Roig marine spaces – the latter including the sea off the Sierra Escalona, an SPA and Site of Community Importance ( SCI).
“Regrettably it did not protect the marine area associated with the Segura river mouth’s listed wetland and the Guardamar sand dunes SCI,” noted the ecologists.
In July 2014 the TabarcaCabo de Palos SPA was declared, protecting more than 1,200 square kilometres including the Tabarca and Cabo Roig SPAs and waters beyond them, but again without the river mouth, which has now also been excluded from the Natura 2000 project.
The associations have registered objections, submitting information about thousands of seabirds of 23 different species ‘ which depend on the high levels of fish in the estuary for their development at crucial stages of their life cycle’. These include noteworthy
concentrations of species which are protected under EU legislation.
“This is why excluding it from the Natura 2000 network is completely nonsensical,” they argue.
The conservationists also accuse the ministry of including insufficient information about loggerhead turtles in its published project.
hey sent in reports of six
attempts to nest between 2015 and 2020 on beaches in Guardamar, Orihuela and Torrevieja, and proposed that the project add measures to facilitate the reproduction of this threatened turtle.
Furthermore, they asked the ministry to set up educational centres about the protected marine spaces in the municipalities along the south Alicante coastline.