2023-05-25 11:15:34
More than a thousand activities throughout Europe, a fifth of them in Spain, celebrate the European Day of Parks on May 24, which in 2023 is commemorated under the motto Building on our roots.
The celebration seeks to bring citizens, visitors and residents of natural spaces closer to the beauty, culture and values of the natural heritage of protected environments understood as “living conservation territories for human well-being”, according to the Europarc-Spain spokesperson and coordinator of the technical office of the Fernando González Bernáldez Foundation, Marta Múgica.
Europarc-Spain is the Spanish section of the Europarc Federation, which includes 40 European countries that work for protected areas. Nearly 30 administrations responsible for planning and managing more than 2,000 protected areas participate in the Spanish section.
Indeed, Múgica has explained in statements to Europa Press that the European Day of Parks is a European event promoted by the Spanish section, which was launched in 1999, 24 years ago. It is, in his opinion, a “fantastic opportunity” to recognize and disseminate the rich natural and cultural heritage of protected areas, as well as good practices for their conservation.
The finale of the celebration will take place at 6:00 p.m. at the Casa Encendida in Madrid. The event will expose the past, present and future of protected areas through traditional knowledge linked to biodiversity, the ancestral use of plants and the rich folklore of the natural environment.
Spain is, according to Múgica, one of the European countries with the largest protected area; Specifically, more than a third of the terrestrial territory and 12 percent of its marine space is protected, which is why he insists that the event is a “magnificent opportunity” to call for collaboration to improve the protection of protected areas and highlight their role in conserving and restoring nature and responding to climate change.
This is part of the challenges identified by Europarc in the Program 2030, global change and protected areas and in coordination between sectoral policies and the social and economic benefits of their conservation.
The day will be celebrated with hundreds of activities in all the autonomous communities: routes, guided tours, conferences, environmental awareness activities, family and children’s workshops, games in nature.
autonomous communities
For example, in Andalusia, the xeriscape workshop in the Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park stands out to learn how to build homemade gardens with native species of Andalusian ecosystems; a cleaning day in the Natural Park of La Breña and the Marismas de Barbate.
In Aragon, interpretive itineraries are offered in its natural parks and in the Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park. Meanwhile, in the Balearic Islands, in the Llevant Peninsula Natural Park, a storyteller for children has been programmed about the livestock activity in the park.
Catalonia stands out for its high number of activities, with close to a hundred actions both in natural parks managed by the Generalitat and those managed by the Barcelona Provincial Council. In the Canary Islands, Tenerife has turned to activities in the rural parks of Anaga and Teno.
As for Castilla-La Mancha, the celebration is part of the III Week of Protected Natural Areas, with activities, routes, guided visits to interpretation centers, photography and school drawing contests.
For its part, the Natural Heritage Foundation of Castilla y León has organized activities in all its protected areas, such as the Sierra de Gredos Regional Park, where a new edition of the Piorno en Flor Festival is being held, with activities such as an exhibition of watercolors or the construction of a ‘chozuelo’, an old refuge for shepherds to spend the night in the summer.
Extremadura has designed two thematic routes with schoolchildren in the Monfragüe National Park and in Galicia, some conferences will allow sharing experiences in the management of Galician parks. The Community of Madrid stands out for its various events designed by environmental education centers and interpretive routes.
Likewise, Murcia has programmed various activities on the territory, such as guided tours in the regional parks of Valle and Carrasco and the Sierra de la Pila and a series of concerts from the cycle Music and Nature.
The natural parks of Guipúzcoa carry out various family or group activities focused on flora, the forest or animals, while in the Valencian Community it has organized interpretive walks in the Puebla de San Miguel Natural Park.
National Parks
In addition to the actions of the autonomous communities, the teams of the 16 National Parks and the National Parks Autonomous Organization have prepared activities in all their spaces, such as in the Sierra de Guadarrama, where visitors can participate in educational games to discover the singularities of the different national parks.
Múgica considers the intensity in the number of activities a “success”, 200 activities in Spain and of these, more than 30 have been recorded in Aragon and more than 100 in Catalonia. Precisely, he has praised the commitment of the Barcelona Provincial Council and the Valencian Community, both for the high number of activities, and for their “involvement” for 10 years with the European Day of Parks.
In this context, he highlighted that the Europarc Federation celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2023 and on that anniversary frames this year’s motto ‘Building on our roots’. Thus, he reflected that Spain is “by far” the country that contributes the most to the Natura 2000 Network and the second with the largest number of National Parks.
The EUROPARC-Spain Technical Office, managed by the Fernando González Bernáldez Foundation, insists on the importance of acting to improve the connectivity of ecosystems and their ecological restoration.
Among the challenges for the future, he calls for work worldwide to increase the protection of the marine surface, which is much lower than the protected terrestrial areas and trusts that the recent adoption of the global agreement for the protection of 30 percent of the oceans here to 2030 will allow promoting the protection of aquatic ecosystems.
However, he assures that one of the threats to natural spaces is the agricultural use of pesticides, fertilizers, the abandonment of waste and climate change, for which reason he insists on the importance of working on mitigation and adaptation but with the participation of the different social actors. The person in charge of the Spanish entity calls for good conservation tools, to achieve a favorable social and economic context and an “environmentalization of all sectoral policies”.
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