Environmental Crime in Lagoa
Editor, This month Lagoa Council marked International Wetlands Day with a week-long programme of information about the importance of wetlands for the global environment.
Meanwhile the council has approved plans to destroy 11 hectares of valuable wetland in Lagoa and replace it with an industrial park. Mayor of Lagoa, Luis Encarnação, believes that the wetland at Alagoas Brancas contains nothing of value despite the findings of a 2019 study by experts from Lisbon and the University of the Algarve which calls for protection of this valuable wetland. He cites an inept report hastily prepared in 2018 by ICNF, the environment agency in Portugal, which states that the wetland is not important enough to be included in the government’s network of protected sites.