Environmentalists ask for development halt in Mar Menor

Ecologists & nature organisations have asked the government of Murcia to call an urgent stop to any projects for property development in the Mar Menor area.

Speaking to the press after a meeting with the regional president on Monday, Pedro García, the president of the nature organisation ANSE, said that Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund/Adena & SEO/Birdlife, all share his organisation’s concerns at the ‘intolerable foolishness of the development madness and hastiness which is taking place in parts of Murcia, such as the Mar Menor, Aguilas & Lorca.’

García asked the regional area president Ramón Luis Valcárcel at their meeting to call an urgent stop to any pending land reclassification for construction in the area & to not accept any new projects in the area.

The Mar Menor, Europe’s largest salt lake, is covered by five protection orders, four of them international. García has said that construction of up to 70,000 new homes has been authorised to be built there, as well as seven golf courses & a new road crossing the salt lake.

The ANSE president said that the regional government’s application to build 4,100 new homes & a golf course on protected land in the Sierra de La Almenara, in Aguilas, will have a serious effect on one of the last pairs of Bonelli eagles left living there in the area.

The government, which says it supports sustainable development for natural spaces, has now set up meetings with the ANSE representatives to review their report on the situation in hand.

Full story on typicallyspanish.com