This morning the seminar of the LIFE+ INDEMARES project “Advancing in Marine Conservation” was held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment (MAGRAMA), in Madrid.

This seminar marks the starting point of the last phase of the LIFE+ INDEMARES project, which began in January 2009 with the aim of contributing to the protection and sustainable use of biodiversity in Spanish seas by identifying areas of value for the marine Natura 2000 Network.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Federico Ramos, the Secretary General for Fisheries, Carlos Domínguez Díaz, the Director General for Sustainability of the Coast and the Sea, Pablo Saavedra, and the Director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, participated in the seminar. At the event, organised by the Biodiversity Foundation, Federico Ramos highlighted the importance of this seminar as the opening of a process of sharing findings and, at the same time, of coordination of all sectors to agree on possible measures for their management.

Thus, the seminar is the starting point of a public participation process that will aim to expose to the sectors involved the ecological values found in the study areas and the impacts produced on these values in order to seek, in a participatory process, the best possible management mechanisms that will allow conservation to be combined with the human activities that are being carried out in these areas.

After more than 100 oceanographic campaigns, socio-economic studies, dissemination, participation and awareness-raising actions, and many other initiatives, the project enters the final stretch this year, showing the great biodiversity of our seas and therefore the importance of conserving them.