Depopulation of rural areas and biodiversity
Our rural world is so fragile that there aren’t any witches left to cast spells to solve the problem, in fact, if Aragón (a region in North Spain) is leader in anything, it is in the number of abandoned villages. There is no official data to number them, but it is known that there are more than 200.
If the authorities don’t remedy this immediately, that number will soon double, and for every village lost, we will lose a part of our culture and a piece of our history, in spite of all the work that has been put into building a future, generation after generation. We do not realise the role played by rural areas in maintaining the landscape and biodiversity.
I remember a farmer telling me:
“Yes, I am a farmer, but moreover I am a landscape gardener, and the landscape belongs to all”.
Read the full article by Lucía López Marco - via SIMRA project blog.
[Photo by Andrew Gould - Flickr]
