The plans have already been dubbed “vague” and “full of oddities” by a member of the Ria Formosa Natural Park Co-Management Commission
Nine new management plans for protected areas in the Algarve are under public consultation until May 2 on the online portal participa.pt.
The plans can be consulted individually for the following areas: Guadiana, Guadiana/Jeromenha, Barrocal, Monchique, Caldeirão, Arade/Odelouca, Ria Formosa/Castro Marim, Ria de Alvor, and Ribeira de Quarteira.
The plans were created for Special Conservation Areas (Zonas Especiais de Conservação in Portuguese, or ZEC) and Special Protection Areas (Zonas de Proteção Especial, or ZPE).
“The Regulatory Decree No. 1/2020, of March 16th, classified the 62 sites of community importance in the territory of mainland Portugal as ZECs and provides that complementary measures for the conservation of habitats and species present in each ZEC are defined in management plans. These plans identify conservation objectives, specific measures to achieve them, operational methods, and a monitoring programme for their execution,” says the description of each plan currently under public consultation.
With the plans being made available for public consultation on Wednesday (April 3), anyone interested in reading the plans and making their voices heard had just under one month to do so.
While this may seem like an appropriate amount of time, one citizen in particular has already called out the rushed deadline, considering the complexity of the documents available for consultation.
“For each of the nine zones, a link is available on the Participa portal containing a proposal plan and a report, which, in the case of Ria Formosa/Castro Marim, amounts to over 230 pages in total. With 28 days remaining (at the time) for the public consultation period and considering the annexes with maps of difficult chromatic readability, we are faced with a careful and critical reading of about 10 pages per day for just one of the nine presented zones, filled with thousands of scientific names and other terminologies that are far from being commonplace,” explains Cláudia Sil – a member of the Ria Formosa Natural Park Co-Management Commission and of the Regional Council of the Algarve Regional Development Commission (CCDR Algarve) – in a statement sent to the Resident.
Sil goes on to slam the plans for “omitting the common names of species,” questioning whether the public consultation process is “aimed at common people.”
Stressing that these plans are meant to remain in force for 10 years, Sil says that “much of what is stated in the plan proposal is conveniently vague,” leaving readers in a “limbo of thought” as to whether “what should be done is actually included in what (the plans) propose to do”.
Cláudia Sil also says the plans are filled with “oddities,” such as the absence of any mention of seahorses in the Ria Formosa/Castro Marim plan in particular. As readers may recall, the seahorse population at Ria Formosa came dangerously close to disappearing at the end of the last decade, although recent conservation efforts have helped the numbers of the hippocampus species recover.
“These species have serious conservation problems requiring specific and urgent protection measures, which has led them to be listed in the annexes of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) and in the Community Regulation that applies this convention in the European Union,” says Sil.
She goes on to explain that this species was selected by the Ria Formosa Natural Park Co-Management Commission to be a part of its logo due to its “importance and relevance in that protected area.”
“Instead, species with the common names of shad and lamprey appear among the suggestions of fish fauna to be addressed (which do not exist in Ria Formosa),” Sil says. “This results from the merging of two distinct natural areas into the same management drawer (Ria Formosa and Castro Marim).”
These issues make Cláudia Sil feel like the efforts that people will have to participate in this public consultation process will “once again be in vain.” Still, she stresses that the “best thing we can do is wave from afar to democracy and show that, even so, it still exists.”
