The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has presented the publication of the Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity, a work promoted and paid for by the Ministry to preserve, maintain and promote traditional knowledge of interest, transmitted orally over time in the rural world and that was at risk of being lost. to collaborate in the conservation and sustainable use of natural heritage and biodiversity.
 
The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, thanked the authors of the book and all their collaborators “for their valuable work and contribution with this publication”, a pioneer in Spain and Europe, and stressed “the importance of preserving in an inventory all that knowledge, all that culture and all that baggage that our society has after having been related to nature for a long time”.

This Inventory, on which work continues for future extensions, will be integrated into the Spanish Inventory of Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, and responds to the legal mandate established in the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law. More than 65 experts from multiple disciplines have worked on its writing, from 39 different institutions.

The publication, which can already be consulted and downloaded on the Ministry’s website , combines the informative style with the academic rigor that a work of these characteristics requires. The Inventory includes a description of the methodology designed specifically for the project, as well as a series of informative sheets (just over 50), on traditional uses and knowledge of plants, animals, ecosystems and minerals.
 
Work to conclude the Inventory continues. The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, aware of the value and need for the compilation of traditional practices in Spain, is continuing with the work in a second phase, which will cover a greater number of species, up to about 300. This second phase will last until the beginning of 2017.