MORE VOICES RAISED AGAINST SHORTENED CONSERVATION LIST

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Thursday January 21 2010

ENVIRONMENTALISTS and anti-Grenadilla port campaigners added their voices to condemnation of plans to alter the archipelago's Catalogue of Endangered Species on Thursday.

by JAMES TWEEDIE

Ben Magec – Ecologists in Action and the Platform for Defence of the Port of Santa Cruz echoed the objections raised by Canarian Federation of Animal and Plant Protection Associations (FECAPAP) on Monday to legislation before the regional parliament.

Opponents of the new law point out that it will remove 226 species from the current endangered list of 450 and relegate 94 more to a lesser conservation status, leaving 131 species fully protected.

Ben Magec – named for the indigenous Guanche sun god – expressed its “regret” that the ruling Canarian Coalition (CC) parliamentary group had ignored its invitation to a “round table” discussion on the proposed legislation.

Some 100 people attended the meeting to hear Viera y Clavijo Botanic Garden director David Bramwell, biologist and vet Carmelo Padrón and jurist, ex-vice minister for the environment and Ben Magec member Eugenio Reyes discuss the endangered species list.

The group accused the CC of lacking interest in public debate and having no credible arguments to back up the proposed new catalogue.

The environmentalists said that scientists and the general public had been given no opportunity to participate in the drafting of the law.

Platform for Defence of the Port of Santa Cruz President Cándido Quintana demanded that the “disgraceful” proposal be dropped.

He repeated the call to allow the Canarian scientific community to decide on the catalogue.

But Mr Quintana rejected the involvement of University of La Laguna biology professor and government advisor Dr Antonio Machado, who he accused of having an “interest” in the matter.

Dr Machado was appointed director of the Canarian government's Public Environmental Observation Foundation for Puerto Granadilla (OAG) in 2008.

In the same statement, Mr Quintana reiterated the platform's opposition to the unnecessary” and “rash” planned port at Granadilla.

He argued that Tenerife already possesses a “magnificent” port at Santa Cruz, dismissing arguments that this was too far away from industrial estates 60 kilometres to the south by pointing out that Madrid was 300 kilometres from the nearest sea port.

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