He Environmental Advisory Council of Extremadura (CAMAEX) could not do worse, faced with a modification of the Master Plan for Use and Management (PRUG) of the ‘Hell’s Throat Natural Reserve‘the doors are opened water concessions to irrigate cherry trees outside the Reserve.
The environmental organizations present voted en bloc against in the session of the CAMAEX and notified the General Director of Sustainability that reversing the protection of a natural space is contrary to the laws and has been condemned by several Supreme Court rulings and you cannot understand the insistence on breaking the law to the detriment of the protection and conservation of the ‘Hell’s Throat Natural Reserve‘.
The session of CAMAEX had been convened a few days before with several items on the agenda that actually referred to a single issue: the approval of the modification of the PRUG of the ‘Garganta de los Infiernos Natural Reserve’, the natural heart of the Jerte Valley.
The update of the PRUG is necessary and planned, but it has been used by the Ministry of Agriculture to reverse several of the regulations for the protection of this natural space for the benefit of private interests. The biggest novelty is that Now it will allow the approval of water extractions from it to water cherry trees in the rest of the Jerte Valley..
Hell’s Throat Natural Reserve
Until now, the ‘Hell’s Throat Natural Reserve’ had reserved its waters and forests for the conservation of this place of singular beauty and tranquility, one of the main tourist attractions of the Jerte Valleyalso being until now the only gorge in the entire Jerte Valley preserved from water extraction concessions for irrigation, in attention to its values, which has also earned it to be declared River Reserve by the Tajo Hydrographic Confederation.
Environmental organizations have expressed their total opposition to such a setback in the protection of the ‘Hell’s Throat Natural Reserve’ and they consider that the viability of the cherry trees of the Jerte Valley is guaranteed with the river resources of the rest of the Jerte Valley and if it were true that they also need the waters of the only one to survive Natural Reserve of northern Extremadurait will be because too many have been planted cherry trees.
The solution must go through a better agricultural planning and the adaptation of these crops to climate change without having to exploit the only river gorge in the Jerte Valley declared as Reserva Naturalleaving without content the rules for the protection of these natural values to allow their exploitation, in a clear violation of the principle of non-regression of the environmental protection of protected natural spaces.