This morning, 25 people have been at Do Catorce amphibian reserve: the oldest volunteer is in his sixties and the youngest is… 18 months old! The objective was to finish the first phase of actions at the reserve. They managed it.
Despite the difficulty to organize the work for such a large and diverse group, everyone was able to find a task that he/she could deal with. Eucalyptus were cut down with a chainsaw and with Pulaski axes, trunks and foliage were piled up, litter was removed and taken to the waste disposal point, some bramble was cut, the biomass of a recovered pond was raked up, and gorse and sticks that obstructed the paths were uprooted and removed. Participants ended equally tired and happy with the work done.
So, after 99 days from the signature of the land stewardship agreement with the Coirós Council, with the help of 61 volunteers, who dedicated a total of 384 hours, plus one working day of a tractor driver thanks to the courtesy of Distrito Forestal II, the habitat improvements planned for the wet area are completed, just when the autumn rains are about to come.
Now it’s time for the second phase. We have to look for external funding to be able to hire professionals to cut down the eucalyptus that grow on the quarry walls by means of climbing procedures, to remove and process the roofs with contaminating asbestos, to fence off the abrupt slopes to prevent visitors from falling off by accident, to create information panels and to reform a couple of abandoned buildings, one of them for visitors to shelter in bad weather and the other as a shelter for bats and nocturnal birds.
