Spain invests €6.6 million to restore Mera marshes in Ortigueira

Spain's sub‑delegate in A Coruña, Julio Abalde, and the head of Galicia's Coast Demarcation, Carlos Gil, inspected the Mera marshes in the Ortigueira estuary after the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge approved a restoration project financed with €6,653,362 from the EU LIFE Wetlands programme.

The plan targets roughly 600,000 m² of degraded wetland, aiming to remove former aquaculture infrastructure built in the 1980s, dismantle dikes and gates, and extract about 48,000 m³ of earth and rock. It also includes eradication of invasive vegetation over more than 60,000 m², installation of turbidity barriers, and the creation of a one‑kilometre pedestrian path with a bird‑watching observatory and information panels. A monitoring programme will track habitat, fauna and sediment quality during and after the works, scheduled to start in 2026 and last about ten months. Abalde described the initiative as “a decisive step to recover the ecological functionality of a space of extraordinary environmental value”.