The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo, and the Minister of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Antonio Valbuena, visited this Thursday the development area of the experimental habitat restoration project in the Famara summits. The purpose of the visit was to see firsthand the progress of this initiative, which aims to recover the main biodiversity hotspot of Lanzarote, where more than 400 endemic species of the Canary Islands live.
Dolores Corujo conveyed her thanks to the minister for the visit and for "continuing to support quality environmental projects of great importance for Lanzarote."
"The care of the environment is one of the keys to the functioning of any area of the island, and we have expressed this in each of the economic, tourist, or environmental projects that we have launched. It is a priority for us, and the regional government has understood the importance of this with the implementation of this experimental initiative on the land of Lanzarote," Corujo remarked.
The minister thanked the high degree of involvement of the different participants. "This is a novel project, not only for the methodologies used in the production of plants in the nursery and in the experimental field plots, but also for the way of working, which is an example of inter-administrative collaboration in which the Cabildo of Lanzarote collaborates with the Government of the Canary Islands; the Ministry of Defense; the University of La Laguna; the Canarian Institute of Agricultural Research (ICIA); and the Institute of Secondary Education of Teguise," he commented.
This project is based on the establishment of experimental plots in which methodological proposals for the restoration of arid habitats are tested. Among other objectives, it aims to promote the enrichment of the soil microbiota, develop mechanisms to prevent soil erosion, limit the access of herbivores to the action sites, and obtain live plants from seminal material from the summit for later reintroduction into the affected environment.
In order to guarantee the availability of plant material to successfully carry out the revegetation work of the experimental plot, a collection of seeds and cuttings of native species of the island is carried out, guaranteeing at all times the traceability and phytosanitary status of the material, which is collected both from accessible areas and from the vertical cliffs of Famara.
This initiative also addresses the realization of experimental trials to verify the relevance of soil microorganisms such as mycorrhizal fungi and nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the different phases of restoration; the study of the target soils and the development of mechanisms to prevent erosion; the study of methods to limit the access of herbivores to the most sensitive action sites; the conditioning of plots to put into practice different experimental methodologies for habitat restoration and a drinking trough for birds and the reintroduction of the live plant into the environment.
Training and dissemination
With the aim of involving the population, we work jointly with local administrations and entities in formulas for citizen participation, land stewardship, and environmental education. More than 500 schoolchildren from Lanzarote have visited the project or have received information about it in their classrooms to be familiar with the work carried out for the conservation of the environment.
Valbuena also announced that "a booklet will be published with the short stories and illustrations of all the students who have participated."
