The participation process to update the management plans of 24 marine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in the Canary Islands concluded yesterday with the celebration of the last of the nine participatory workshops, which took place in the municipality of Mogán, on the island of Gran Canaria.

These meetings, organised by the Ministry for Ecological Transition through the Directorate General for Sustainability of the Coast and the Sea, are part of a participatory process that began last April. With the data obtained, new regulations will be published that will update the corresponding management plans to guarantee the protection of these spaces, which were declared Special Areas of Conservation in 2011 with the approval of the corresponding conservation measures and regulation of uses and activities.

More than 400 people with 200 entities involved have participated in these workshops – which are part of the actions planned in the LIFE IP INTEMARES project coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation. Among the agents who have collaborated are representatives of the scientific community, public administrations, NGOs, as well as sectors such as fishing, aquaculture or those related to nautical-recreational activities, among others. In addition, innovative methodologies have been worked on that promote collaboration between the different social agents involved.

The workshops held have made it possible to share the natural values of these 24 Canary Islands marine protected areas, to assess the pressures and impacts to which they are subjected and to identify measures and priority aspects to be included in management plans, as well as proposals for zoning activities. This data will be collected in informative participation reports that will be sent to all the entities involved.

In these 24 areas there are habitats as characteristic and valuable as reefs, sea caves and sandbanks that, in many cases, are home to seagrass meadows, seagrass meadows of great ecological wealth. There are also species of community interest of both marine reptiles, including the loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green (Chelonia mydas) turtles, as well as cetaceans, including bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), skipjack (Stenella coeruleoalba) and spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis), pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus) and grey dolphins (Grampus griseus), or sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus).

In addition, unique fish such as the angelshark (Squatina squatina), which is currently critically endangered according to the classification of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and has recently been included in the category of “Endangered” in the Spanish Catalogue of Threatened Species.