In the first call for the European Award for Good Health Practices in Prisons, instituted by the Regional Office for Europe of the World Health Organization, three Spanish projects have been awarded. Among them is Nacar (Nature and Prison), an initiative that SEO/BirdLife has been developing since 2004 with inmates of El Dueso in the Santoña and Noja Nature Reserve.

The El Dueso prison project is aimed at arousing the interest of inmates and raising awareness about environmental care and its impact on health. In this case, the privileged environment of the center has been used as an instrument of education in the adoption of healthier lifestyle habits. The project is divided into two complementary lines of action:

The Nacar program is aimed at the environmental education of inmates. With the support of SEO/BirdLife, the Santoña and Noja Marshes Nature Reserve (RNMSN) and the centre’s workers, the inmates learn to know and respect nature through bird watching, educational workshops, environmental conferences, conferences and all kinds of initiatives related to their natural environment.

Within the Nacar project there are two groups of activities. On the one hand, the restricted ones, which need (at a legal level) that the people who carry them out have obtained the third degree of imprisonment, with which they already enjoy permits. This group includes monitoring the migration of the Spoonbills (two hours a day for three consecutive months) and guided tours of the nature reserve (all day, quarterly).

On the other hand, there are free access activities, in which any inmate who maintains a normalized prison behavior can participate. Among the latter are some of the novelties provided by the programme, such as the nature film forum, which is held every two months, and the ornithological walks within the centre, also bimonthly, during which a guided tour of the security enclosure is carried out, dominated by meadows, although it also houses a small reed bed and some shrub areas. On these tours, guided either by nature reserve staff, including its director, or by SEO/BirdLife, inmates (and sometimes prison staff themselves) learn to identify and carry out an inventory of the birds observed.