In the lively and interesting gatherings with the biologist Domingo Concepción, fragments of his suggestive life always stood out. He enjoyed recounting the happiness of his childhood years in his house in El Morro in San Bartolomé. His typical terraced house was a perfect "observatory": nine siblings, - "we had a camel, a donkey, goats, sheep, pigs, dogs, cats, chickens, and other domestic animals." His predilection was for pigeons and all flying animals. From there, at just 9 years old, he watched migratory birds from Africa pass by. One day he ran away and reached Risco de Famara to see the yellow-legged gulls fly, another time, following bird flights and seeing their habitat, he reached Los Pocillos beach. At that age, "Mingo the bird man," wrote his first notes in his field notebook. At home, everyone collaborated in the domestic economy of self-sufficiency with the land and animals. He read many borrowed books from his rich friends. He comments that he wanted to be Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente.
He moved to La Laguna to study biology with a scholarship. His mother remade two pairs of trousers for him from his older brothers' clothes, and from a military rucksack, she made him a jacket that lasted him his entire degree. He studied for his degree with many difficulties, interrupting an academic year to save money, working in construction with his brothers in Lanzarote. He finished the five years and managed to graduate. Now, he is known as "Domingo the biologist." When he went to register at INEM to work as a freelance professional, they put many obstacles in his way, telling him that what he intended was a hobby and that it was not in the catalog of professions...
Sunday before the end of the race, he had already walked around Lanzarote and several islands, equipping himself with binoculars, a small camera, a backpack, and a field notebook. He carries out many environmental research projects, a cartographic atlas of vascular flora, bird ringing, census, and monitoring of bird species, and conducts environmental studies in Protected Areas. Domingo divided the island into grids and analyzed its content in depth, carrying out extensive work in Timanfaya National Park. His house was a labyrinth of shelves and ring binders, reference books, and full diaries. He works in organic farming, designs trails, gives talks to educational communities, and in general, is the author of various research projects and publications: agriculture and diversity, the aberrants, the moon and the tides, threshing and winnowing, manure fermentation, seed varieties, work in the lower jable, and others. At EUTL, he teaches the subject of the Natural Environment of the Canary Islands. Tourism and sustainable development. He supervises many Final Degree projects, conducts courses for tourist guides, ornithological tourism courses, and others.
His social commitment to the Environment and against overdevelopment led him to take an active part in the situation of the Island of Lanzarote in the eighties and nineties in the face of the rapid pace of construction throughout the island. Domingo observed how growth directly harmed social well-being and the burden on the territory. All health, educational, social, water, waste, port, airport, and road infrastructures were failing. He wrote from his perspective in the Cuadernos del Guincho and soon after assumed the presidency of this environmental group. He had to fight against golf course projects, marinas, the situation of crushers, jable extraction, illegal constructions, and others. His social commitment against overdevelopment took its toll. -- "They clipped my wings." Public institutions ignored him and even stole his research. On the other hand, all of Domingo's work in progressive sectors of the Island received high social recognition; in this regard, the Tías Foro por la Identidad Association nominated him for the Biosphere Reference Award in 2016 for his various environmental studies and his extensive curriculum.
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