The Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment of MAPAMA (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment), Guillermina Yanguas, today inaugurated the Public Participation Workshop within the framework of the LIFE+ project “Priority Action Framework for the Natura 2000 Network in Spain”, an initiative that has been working since 2012 with the active participation of the Autonomous Communities.

The Director General of Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment of MAPAMA (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment), Guillermina Yanguas, today inaugurated the Public Participation Workshop within the framework of the LIFE+ project “Priority Action Framework for the Natura 2000 Network in Spain”, an initiative that has been working since 2012 with the active participation of the Autonomous Communities.

Yanguas, who was accompanied by Sonia Castañeda, director of the Biodiversity Foundation, stressed that the MAP “is a tool with great potential for the development of the Natura 2000 Network in Spain, and although its process is long and laborious, we are convinced that it is giving very encouraging results”.

This initiative, implemented by the Biodiversity Foundation and MAPAMA (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and the Environment), aims to improve the financing and management capacity of the Natura 2000 Network in Spain through the preparation and implementation of a Priority Action Framework (MAP) for the financing of management measures carried out in the sites included in this Network. as established in Article 8 of the Habitats Directive.

The MAP identifies the strategic conservation priorities of Natura 2000 in Spain, the specific actions needed to achieve them and their potential sources of co-financing, charged to the various Community funds and through innovative financing mechanisms.

In the first phase of the project, priority was given to the collection of technical information with the collaboration of all Autonomous Communities, coordinated by MAPAMA, and the establishment of a methodology to define management measures and priorities.

The MAP strategic document was approved by the Sectoral Conference on 11 March and was publicly presented three days later, in the presence of a representative of the EC’s Nature Unit. Among the actions carried out so far is the creation of a working group with representatives of the Directorate-General for Environmental Quality and Assessment and the Natural Environment, the Ministry and all the regional public administrations responsible for the management of the Natura 2000 Network areas, the compilation of conservation priorities and the creation of an advisory body to analyse the use of other Community funds.

This first document has been sent to the European Commission and includes more than 100 strategic conservation and funding priorities and more than 850 measures. In addition, the MAP document has been made available to the public in digital format and the www.prioridadrednatura2000.es website has been prepared.