Environmentalists want national park extended East of Tarifa port

TARIFA (Agencies) The annual assembly of Ecologistas en Acción's Cádiz branch approved a resolution whereby they will make a formal request to the Junta's Department of the Environment to include the port of Tarifa within the limits of the Strait Nature Park. "We believe that, given the rejection of the port's expansion for environmental impact reasons, and that the Eastern side of the port is of the same biological structure and its inclusion was rejected previously by political pressure, the logical thing is to include it. It also merits the same administrative coherence," says the environmental pressure group.>The expansion eastwards would include Tarifa Island (photo) -a protected area already- and a strip of land for some 700 metres from the port - already under special regulations. The Strait Nature Park became so in 2003 because three biological and bio-geographical provinces converge in the close vicinity: the Lusitanian, the Mauritanian and the Mediterranean, which is why it was also declared officially as Maritime Space Of Extraordinary Interest, and thus a Reservation. The EU and UNESCO both reinforced these nomenclatures in 2006 when it was declared a Place of Community Interest, and Intercontinental Biosphere Reserve, respectively.