Environmental association Almargem has received financial support from the government to study several of the Algarve’s threatened wetland areas.
The goal is to identify what makes these natural areas so special so that local authorities can classify them as protected areas, “keeping them out of the hands of developers”.
The areas that will be studied thanks to the Fundo Ambiental (Environmental Fund) are Alagoas Brancas in Lagoa, Sapais de Pêra and Lagoa dos Salgados in Silves and Albufeira and Trafal and Foz do Almargem in Loulé.
The initiative will involve several specialists from Portugal’s bird society SPEA, the University of Algarve, the national butterfly conservation centre TAGIS and other entities which will produce technical reports detailing the natural characteristics of each of these areas.
Says Almargem, the study will be particularly important for Alagoas Brancas given the “lack of adequate initiatives” by Lagoa council and governmental entities in order to “prove the importance of this small wetland, threatened by an inadmissible industrial allotment plan in an area susceptible to periodic flooding”.
The association adds: “As it is also public knowledge, Sapais de Pêra and Lagoa dos Salgados are threatened by a municipal plan of urbanisation that covers 148 hectares where a golf course, hotels and apartments would be built, in a total of 4,000 beds.”
The two remaining areas (Trafal and Foz do Almargem) are “constantly the target of inadequate interventions, undue use of territory and property speculation”, says the association, and the study hopes to show why they should be protected.
