Castalla raises awareness of the natural environment with the celebration of Environment Week 2022
- The Department of the green area has programmed activities between 25 May and 5 June with routes, competitions, round tables and exhibitions
- The City Council has also presented the ‘Catalogue of environmental activities’, as part of the 1st Municipal Plan for Children and Adolescents
Castalla Town Council has programmed the Environment Week, coinciding with this international day, which is celebrated every year on 5 June. The green area council has prepared a full programme of activities with environmental routes, photography competitions, round tables, conferences and exhibitions aimed at the whole population, which will take place between 25 May and 5 June. There will also be environmental education activities for local schoolchildren.
The councillor for the Environment, Asun Vera, explained that “the aim of the ‘Environment Week’ is to raise awareness among local residents about the importance of caring for our natural environment and to discover them through different outdoor activities and proposals”.
For their part, schoolchildren from colleges and institutes will be able to take part in different activities. There will be travelling exhibitions of medicinal plants in the Aula de la Naturaleza, treasure hunts, environmental education for children, treasure hunts for primary schools and talks for secondary schools. In these activities, monitors will raise awareness among students to improve their environmental education. These activities will be carried out with the different groups on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings, and the general public will be able to visit the exhibition on medicinal plants in the afternoons. Also on Saturday from 10:00 to 14:00 and from 17:00 to 20:00.
The Aula de la Naturaleza, located in the Carrasca Park, will host a travelling exhibition of medicinal plants from 25th to 28th May. Schoolchildren will be able to visit it in the mornings, both in primary and secondary schools, and on the afternoons of Thursday 26th and Friday 27th. In addition, it will be open to the general public all day Saturday.
Thus, the day of Saturday 28th May will be full of activities in the Carrasca Park. At 10:00 there will be a botanical walk, at 12:00 and at 19:00 there will be a guided tour of the plant exhibition and a visual conference. There will also be marquees set up in this area by local companies and associations, such as the CREA Waste Consortium, Recycle with the 5 senses, the Red Cross, Asoka, Pepa, the Tourism Council, the Association for the Service of Forest Pollination (ASAF) and Natura i Gent. Visitors will be able to enjoy a zip line and a climbing wall installed in the Carrasca Park throughout the day.
On the other hand, the protected landscape of the Sierra del Maigmó i Sit will also be full of activities. Between 9:00 and 15:00, information and training days will be held on good practices and the possibilities of this natural environment, with workshops and exhibitions on the tracks of the local fauna.
As for the hiking routes, the first one will be on Sunday 22 May in the morning in the Pou de la Carrasca area. The other two, at night, will take place on Saturdays 9 July in Alt del Xarco and 20 August in Xorret de Catí.
In addition, between the 1st and 19th June, the exhibition of the first photography competition ‘Riu Verd, Riu Viu’ can be visited at the Casa de Cultura, a collaboration between the Town Hall, Natura i Gent and the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Castalla. On Wednesday 1st there will also be a talk on Circular Economy by IBIAE. The following day, Tuesday 2 June, there will be a talk on ‘Alicante’s natural environment as a sustainable tourist resource’. Both at 19:30 in the Casa de Cultura.
Finally, on Friday 3rd June, the book ‘Muntanyes del Sud’ by Josep Lluís Bernabeu will be presented, with more than 355 photos of the main places in our counties, with descriptions of the most outstanding routes and natural spaces.
Catalogue of environmental activities for children
Castalla Town Council has also designed a catalogue of environmental activities in the town, within the framework of the 1st Municipal Plan for Children and Adolescents, with a large number of resources and activities to be carried out. This initiative is funded by the Department of Equality and Inclusive Policies of the Generalitat Valenciana. The tool includes hiking routes, outdoor activities, conferences on the environment and other municipal resources.