The Cabildo is carrying out an environmental recovery plan within their “Save La Geria” project, which involves the recovery of farms that have been abandoned for a long time and contain a high landscape value within the protected area.
Last Friday the Cabildo President, Oswaldo Betancort, visited several of the farms in La Geria that have been identified for restoration within their 3.5 million euro “Save La Geria” project.
“Lanzarote is not only legally protected, as we have demonstrated in these months of work to promote this special project, but we are also reactivating an environmental project led by Samuel Martín, in which we give the possibility to the owners of La Geria to enter their farms to decorate and maintain the cultivated space and that is perfectly integrated with the landscape and its ecosystem,” Betancort stated during the visit.
“I would also like to highlight the social component of the initiative, since the crews of workers belong to vulnerable groups of the island, which through the program are given the opportunity to opt for a decent job that gives them a motivation and personal balance, giving the project a significant environmental and social value,” he added.
Minister, Samuel Martín, added that “the Cabildo has a very interesting project for such a sensitive space, thanks to which about 50 farms have already been cleaned in recent months and we will continue working in this line with the different owners who want us to recover those farms, because in the end La Geria is landscape, La Geria is Lanzarote and we have to value our territory, our landscape and, above all, the protection of our spaces”.
“The program works as a way to help those owners who do not have the means to carry out the restoration of the farms, but provided that it goes hand in hand with a commitment by the owner to care for and cultivate such land for a minimum of 3 years,” Martín explained.
“In those cases where the owners do not have the means to be able to take care of the farms, we have a program called Banco de Tierras (Land Bank), where they can give the land to people interested in agricultural activity, thus slowing the loss of useful agricultural land on the island,” he added.
Luis’ story
Betancort and Martín saw firsthand the work done on a farm of 55,000 square meters belonging to one of the winegrowers who has had the help of this program, Luis Fuentes.
“My wife and I have worked on this farm, but I recently had a small accident at work and if it were not for these people who have come, it would have been very difficult to maintain a farm as large as this one,” said the winegrower, who was grateful for the help that this means for people in his situation.
