Today, Sunday, the people who came to the beach of Miño for a walk watched with curiosity a large number of busy adolescents.
Scout groups from throughout Galicia, members of the Federación de Scouts-Exploradores de España (ASDE), are holding their yearly concentration in Boebre this weekend. Accepting the invitation of Fragas do Mandeo to do environmental volunteering in this area, they decided to take the opportunity and collaborate in the eradication of invasive exotic species and remove litter from Playa Grande in Miño.
The 52 volunteers, among them seven from Fragas do Mandeo and five Council employees who helped with the work, were divided into teams and spread out throughout the beach dunes to manually uproot several patches of exotic species: 
ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis), intermediate periwinkle (Vinca difformis), Pampas grass (Cortaderia selloana), crocosmia (Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora), capeweed (Arctotheca calendula), yucca (Yucca gloriosa) and German iris (Iris germanica). Thus, they avoided these plants to go on colonizing the dunes, displacing in their advance the native vegetation.
Once the work with invasive species was finished, they walked along the beach removing litter and went on by the dunes until the whole sandy area was clean.
The outcome of this morning and afternoon of volunteering activity was five tractors full of vegetal debris, waste and wood. They did not finish off with all the exotic invasive species, but it was an enormous boost to the improvement of the conservation of this beach, which is officially proposed to form part of the Natura Network, when its future extension takes place.
All the exotic species eliminated are garden plants. Therefore it is very important that locals be aware of this problem and do not throw away vegetal debris from their gardens anywhere. They should destroy them and use it as compost for the garden instead.
The Scouts is a youth movement that promotes a value system with the objective of building a better world, more just and supportive. The intervention for environment conservation forms part of their principles of service to society through personal and community responsibility.
Fragas do Mandeo is grateful to the Scouts —as well as to Miño Council and the volunteers that joined the initiative— for their effort in the conservation of our natural areas.
