Overarching activities addressing Wetland Conservation in the Mediterranean Region:

Saltpan Initiative

(2018 – Currently)

With the help of SEO Birdlife, we were able to include the Bay of Cádiz in the European project “Saltpan Initiative” financed by the MAVA Foundation through Birdlife International, in order to organise restoration works on the saltpans in the Bay of Cádiz. This project covered saltpans in Morocco, Portugal, France, Tunisia and Spain and promoted the restoration and value enhancement of the coastal wetlands in the Mediterranean.

Based on this project and with the collaboration of Cádiz University, we were able to increase the land suitable for the nesting of species of shorebirds that breeds on La Esperanza Saltpan, located in the Natural Park of Cádiz Bay in the municipality of Puerto Real, with the hope of promoting their potential as a point of touristic interest.

Within the Project, we organised the documentary ‘Saltpan Initiative, saltpans and estuaries: Wetlands that connect lives’ talking about the importance of coastal wetlands and saltpans for migratory birds and the role of mankind in their sustainable management and conservation.We created publicity material (posters, stickers, t-shirts) to highlight the importance of maintaining human activity on the saltpans and estuaries located on the Eastern Atlantic migratory path for both birds and mankind.

Poster

The Project also included the organisation of educational and technical conferences to highlight the importance of saltpans and estuaries as social ecosystems that connect lives, create an added value and improve our future.


The conferences that were run at Cadiz Universitywere a resounding success, due to the level of participation and the implication, quality and content of the speakers and their topics.

A full day was dedicated to the presentations and another day was dedicated to a field trip where participants visited the El Caño Tidal Mill, home of the restaurant Aponiente (Three Michelín Starred restaurant), run by the renowned The Chef of the Sea, Ángel Leon, as an example of the sustainable use of ingredients and materials from the salt marshes in avant-garde cuisine. Afterwards, the visit continued to San José Saltpan, a new wetland which conform an important habitat restored by Salarte, and later we moved to La Esperanza Saltpan, to visit the works directed at improving natural habitat.

Sticker

The gathering served as an opportunity to propose the creation of a Network of Artisanal Salt Pans along the Eastern Atlantic Migratory Flight Path, for which the Bay of Cádiz was put forward as a possible headquarters for this intercontinental initiative that hopes to bring together salt marshes and wetlands from Europe and Africa.

Poster

We participate as an associate organisation in this Project, created to promote the sustainable management of artisanal salt pans from Libia, Tunisia, Italy and Spain and including members from the Spanish Committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature –IUCN- with headquarters in Málaga and Cadiz University.

Duration:
Three years project.

Objectives:
Promoting the sustainable development of artisanal saltpans, offering support in areas of economic, environmental and good governance related to salt production.

Addressing challenges shared across four regions (Spain, Italy, Libia & Tunisia), hopes to promote the development of a shared model of sustainable and adaptable management that foments the territorial appreciation of artisanal salt pans and their multifunctional use to diversify socio-economic activity, generating income from the production of high quality salt, whilst also obtaining and commercialising other products (such as foods or cosmetics) or exploring the potential for ecotourism, always respecting the environmental protagonism of the salt marshes and the ecosystemic services of the saltpans.

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Fondo para la Custodia y Recuperación de la Marisma Salinera “Salarte”
Molino de Mareas El Caño. C/ Francisco Cossi Ochoa, s/n. 11.500 El Puerto de Santa María, (Cádiz). C.I.F. G91991950.
Registered in the Registro de Asociaciones de Andalucía with nº 10.226 – Section 1. And in the Registro Andaluz de Entidades de Voluntariado with number 2804.

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