In the Environmental Volunteering Program in Beaches and Rivers 2019, actions have been launched with land stewardship entities, and in addition, there is the participation of the LIFE IP INTEMARES project, for the effective and integrated management of the Network of marine areas of Natura 2000.

For seven years we have launched annual environmental volunteering programs. During this year it is being developed on beaches and rivers, and we wanted to involve the youngest in the care of the environment, so that they actively participate in the conservation of natural ecosystems, the coastline and watersheds.

In the Environmental Volunteering Program in Beaches and Rivers 2019, as in previous editions, volunteer actions have been launched with land stewardship entities, and in addition, there is the participation of the LIFE IP INTEMARES project, for the effective and integrated management of the Network of Natura 2000 marine spaces.

The program is being carried out by eleven associations, since last March, in different areas of action. The areas established to carry out the volunteering actions are those corresponding to the 5 Marine Demarcations (North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Strait and Alboran, Levantine-Balearic and Canary Islands) and the 12 Hydrographic Demarcations (Guadalquivir, Segura, Júcar, Miño-Sil and Galicia Costa, western and eastern Cantabrian and internal basins of the Basque Country, Duero, Tagus, Guadiana, Ebro, internal basins of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, Atlantic and Mediterranean basins of Andalusia and the Canary Islands, basins of Ceuta and Melilla). In each area they will carry out a minimum of five activities in which at least 250 people will be involved, so the participation of more than 4,250 volunteers is expected.

Next week the Associació la Sorellona will continue its actions in the hydrographic districts of the internal basins of Catalonia, where it has already carried out six actions, with a day of recovery of thorny river habitats in the Galligants river (Girona).

During the month of August, the Red Cross will carry out beach clean-ups and environmental education and awareness workshops in the Canary Islands marine demarcation. The beach cleaning activity consists of the removal of waste, its separation and accounting, and then the sampling is carried out using the citizen science field card of the Marine Strategies program of the Ministry for Ecological Transition. For their part, the workshops work with volunteers on a series of participatory dynamics that have to do with the problem of marine litter, its origin and good practices to minimise it.

On the other hand, CIRCE will develop, throughout the summer, different actions in Natura 2000 Network spaces within the Citizen Science Programme on marine biodiversity and pollution in Eastern Andalusia. They plan to carry out a series of samples of marine biodiversity and plastic pollution by installing tents in different municipalities and natural spaces to give information to citizens about it.

We will continue to provide information on the rest of the actions framed in this Environmental Volunteering Programme that we are going to carry out in the coming months for conservation in the maritime-terrestrial public domain and the hydraulic public domain, among other spaces. You can follow our Twitter @FBiodiversidad and our Facebook, where we will keep you informed of all the news.