The Biodiversity Foundation held yesterday the meeting of the Advisory Council of the Land Stewardship Platform, in which the results of the third inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives of the Spanish State were presented.

The Biodiversity Foundation held yesterday the meeting of the Advisory Council of the Land Stewardship Platform, in which the results of the third inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives of the Spanish State were presented.

The inventory has been prepared by the Land Stewardship Platform (PCT) of the Biodiversity Foundation, whose objective is to promote the development of land stewardship in Spain, acting as a tool for dissemination and promotion of this conservation strategy and as a meeting place for all the land stewardship networks and entities in the country.

In this sense, the third inventory includes all the stewardship initiatives developed, including the results of the analysis of the data collected in the Inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives of the Spanish State, results that will be forwarded to the Nature Data Bank.

The meeting was attended by different units of the Administration, custodial entities and the agricultural, livestock and hunting sectors, who have expressed needs and suggestions in relation to the actions of this Platform.

During the meeting, the different participating entities have expressed their concerns regarding the current panorama of stewardship in the Spanish State and have proposed some lines of work for the PCT of the Biodiversity Foundation, such as the need to increase the dissemination of the concepts of stewardship and the interest in working new ways of public-private collaboration in relation to spaces of public hydraulic and maritime-terrestrial domain.

Among the data obtained, it is pointed out that the total area dedicated to land stewardship in Spain in 2013 amounted to 346,006 hectares, which is 18% more than the figures collected in 2010, the date on which the second inventory was published. An increase that is also reflected in the number of custody entities, which has increased by 65%, from 130 registered in 2010 to the 214 that are now part of this inventory.

Likewise, the number of custody agreements has increased by 14% compared to 2010 (1136 agreements), with 2027 custody agreements currently in place throughout Spain, except in Ceuta and Melilla. In addition to this set of entities, there are seven regional networks that promote this conservation tool and support custodian entities in the development and improvement of their activity.

On the other hand, the Network of Territorial Custody has presented the main actions and results of the LIFE+ LANDLIFE (www.landstewardship.eu) project, among which the next Seminar on Land Stewardship to be held from May 29 to 31 in Tavertet, Barcelona, stands out.