Neighbourhood associations have asked the Orihuela Council to take “urgent action” due to the lack of maintenance of the Punta de La Glea micro-reserve, stretching along the seafront from Campoamor to Cabo Roig, where the deposits of pruning and illegal tree felling, together with a mass of abandoned trash, puts the area at risk of fire on the arrival of summer
Just two years after improvements to the flora micro-reserve at Punta de La Glea, an area known as the Aguamarina ravine, with an investment of just over 30,000 euros, neighbourhood associations are now denouncing the poor management of it’s conservation, the lack of maintenance and many deficiencies in an area that flows on to a fossil beach, said to be about 125,000 years old.
It is an expanse that reaches the foot of the cliff and the clear blue waters of the Mediterranean sea, a corner of the municipality that masses 56 species typical of the Mediterranean, in just six hectares, including some endangered and native species of the Spanish southeast, where the largest world population of many of them are represented in this stretch of coast that separates Campoamor from Cabo Roig.
The Neighbourhood Association, La Asociación de Vecinos de Cabo Roig y Lomas, (AVCRL), has submitted a letter to the City Council in which it repeats a request that it made at the end of last year, when it told the Council of “the existence of abundant remains of pruning and felling, carried out illegally, in the micro- reserve”, requesting that the Department of the Environment urges the Ministry of the Environment to carry out “urgent work to ensure its removal and maintenance”.
Now the AVCRL has been forced to request “for the third time”, that immediate action be carried out by the council and the Tragsa company, which is responsible for maintenance, to remove the dirt (paper, plastic bags, packaging remains, etc.) that has accumulated in many areas, as well as removing the remains of pruning and felled pine trees carried out illegally more than a year ago. The Residents Association is also requesting that the vegetation that invades the Aguamarina promenade be trimmed back.
In addition to “the image of abandonment that this council negligence conveys”, the letter continues, we warn of the ” high danger of fire that exists before the imminent arrival of summer”.
At the same time, the AVCRL says that it is deeply disappointed that none of their correspondence has been answered by the Department of the Environment, despite it exceeding the three-month period that the regulations require for the City Council to respond.
Neither the action that was carried out two years ago, nor the declaration of the 6 hectare micro-reserve, made by the Ministry of the Environment in 2012, granting protection of its varied and rich plant heritage, have served to encourage any care for its appearance, which continues to be neglected, with some areas of the ravine that look more like a rubbish tip. It is difficult to distinguish the between the delicate vegetation that survives there among bushes and weeds.
