With the screening of the documentary “INDEMARES, Conserving the Unknown”, the results of the LIFE+ INDEMARES project, coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, have been presented today in Madrid, a project that has achieved, among other objectives, the inclusion of 49 new marine areas in the Natura 2000 Network, 39 of which correspond to SPAs and the remaining ten to the figure of Site of Importance Community (SCI).

The Director General of Sustainability of the Coast and the Sea, Pablo Saavedra, during the presentation of the results of INDEMARES at the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, described it as “the most important project developed in Spain on marine conservation”. Thanks to INDEMARES, Spain is approaching the goal set by the Convention on Biological Diversity of protecting 10 percent of marine areas by 2020, for which five million hectares have been studied and more than 50 new marine species have been discovered through almost 150 oceanographic campaigns.

The LIFE+ INDEMARES project “Inventory and designation of the Natura 2000 Network in marine areas of the Spanish State” began its journey in 2009 and concluded on December 31, 2014. Coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation, throughout its development it has had a participatory approach, integrating the work of leading institutions in the field of management, research and conservation of the marine environment, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment itself to the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, the Spanish National Research Council, the Spanish National Research Council, the Spanish National Research Council, the Spanish National Research Council, the Spanish National Research Council, ALNITAK, the Coordinator for the Study of Marine Mammals, OCEANA, the Society for the Study of Cetaceans in the Canary Islands, SEO/BirdLife and WWF Spain.