Dear attendants (and blog readers) to the 1st Med Plant Conservation Week.<\/p>\n
I am Dr Emilio Laguna, pioneer of the concept and establishment of plant micro-reserves network, and main plant officer of the Generalitat Valenciana -autonomous regional government of the Valencian Community, Spain-. I would like to express what I expect from the 1st Med Plant Conservation Week.<\/p>\n
As a general desire, I hope that this conference will serve to boost the social participation in the conservation of Mediterranean wild flora, through the exposition of ideas, projects and practical results, as well as its role as a training school for young and new conservationists able to promote and performe actions involving local people. In this context, I hope to bring the experience of our projects in plant conservation, which began about 30 years ago, and that in many thematic areas have been pioneers for Spain and for the whole Mediterranean region.<\/p>\n
For the workshop on ‘Plant Species Conservation Planning’ I hope that presentations and debates\u00a0 will find ways to integrate local initiatives.Unfortunately planning is usually a top-down process in which national authorities draft the conservation plans. In this approach, local participation often is understood as a mere collaboration reached throughout public consultation, just as an administrative procedure. However, since many endangered species live only in small areas, integrating the local participation from the outset, joining the opinion of local botanists and plant conservationists -often volonteers or non-professional botanists-, can become a crucial issue.<\/p>\n
Additionally, conservation plans are often very large documents suitable only for specialists. Their measures are too detailed, and once they are legally approved, often become a rigid framework that does not allow the adaptive management of species. It is probably advisable to get easier and flexible plans, drafted in plain language and enclosing a more active participation of local people.<\/strong><\/p>\n Reporting the workshop ‘From ex situ to in situ conservation’, I hope to go towards an active application of the conservationists’ sentence “think globally and act locally”. Except for some extreme cases needing the use of biotechnological resources, only available in big conservation or research centres, both ex situ procedures and the further conservation translocations can be often performed by regional and local institutions, NGOs and volonteers. This way also ensures a continuous -and cheaper!- engagement for long-term conservation.<\/strong><\/p>\n On the workshop about ‘Pastoral Management and Plant Conservation’ I hope mainly to learn, because I come from a region where social changes of recent decades have made almost disappear livestock and sheepherds!. Unlike most places in the Mediterranean, the problem for the region of Valencia is not how to compatible livestock use with the conservation of wild significant plants, but in the opposite way, trying to recover a nearly extinct pastoral tradition that can yield open natural and semi-natural areas, available to hold our abundant heliophilous endemic species -close to 400 species-.<\/p>\n I hope that these desires can be holding fast as the 1st Med Plant Conservation Week progresses.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear attendants (and blog readers) to the 1st Med Plant Conservation Week. I am Dr Emilio Laguna, pioneer of the concept and establishment of plant micro-reserves network, and main plant officer of the Generalitat Valenciana -autonomous regional government of the Valencian Community, Spain-. I would like to express what I expect from the 1st Med…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[168],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emilio-laguna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3311"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3320,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3311\/revisions\/3320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2021.medplantsweek.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Everybody is welcome to join their discussion!<\/h4>\n