The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, through the Biodiversity Foundation and the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation, are collaborating in the restoration of the “Junta de los Ríos” wetland in Alcázar de San Juan (Ciudad Real).
 
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, through the Biodiversity Foundation and the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation, are collaborating in the restoration of the “Junta de los Ríos” wetland in Alcázar de San Juan (Ciudad Real).
 
Representatives of the Ministry itself, the Biodiversity Foundation, the city council of Alcázar de San Juan, the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation and the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha have participated in the coordination meeting of this action, held in the town. 
 
This project, developed by the city council of Alcázar de San Juan, with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation through its 2013 call for grants, is endowed with a budget of 75,200 euros.
 
Given that the total execution budget was estimated at 178,000 euros, the difference was assumed by the City Council itself, after agreeing on the viability and adequacy of the project with the rest of the Administrations with competences in the area (Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha, Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation).
 
The “Junta de los Ríos” wetland is located at the confluence of the Gigüela and Záncara rivers, which historically flooded when the flow of these rivers, originally poorly embedded and shallow riverbeds, increased and overflowed, flooding a large area more or less temporarily.
 
This is a typical case of “river tables” sitting on a floodplain. This type of wetland was very common until the mid-twentieth century in La Mancha, but it gradually disappeared until its almost total extinction today.
 
Over the last sixty years, there has been a significant regression in the area originally occupied by this wetland (which some authors estimate at more than 3,500 hectares), as well as a clear decrease in the number of flood episodes and their duration, all of which is mainly related to the old partial drying up and the scarcity of water that currently flows through these rivers.
 
However, to this day a small part of the original floodplain remains very little transformed, so that in years of abundant rainfall the wetland reappears and remains functional for a few months.
 
The project covers a peripheral area of non-floodable nature with native vegetation (about 120-150 hectares) where, on the land of higher topographic levels, it is proposed to carry out plant restoration works that help to increase the degree of naturalness of the same and in a central area, of a floodable nature (about 150-180 ha), where the lands of lower topographic levels it is proposed to carry out a series of civil engineering works (always of shallow) that allow the purified water to be diverted and flooded with it these lands, thus restoring a small part of the old wetland.
 
The final objective is to achieve the restoration of a space of about 300 hectares in total, located right between the Gigüela and Záncara rivers at the height of their confluence point.