2A- INTRODUCTION TO THE BLOG - MAÑARIA'S QUARRIES.

2 A- MAÑARIA’S QUARRIES:

We are four students from San Jose Jesuitak call Estepan, Pablo, Ana and Candela. Our teacher has presented to us the proposal of making a blog about all the issues in Bizkaia that can causes several changes or can affect in the biodiversity in some aspects. Some of our classmates are working on fracking, invasive species… we have decided to work on a topic situated really close to us, Mañaria’s curries.

Mañaria is a little village situated, as all the issues we are working with, in Bizkaia, the Basque Country. This small village is not very populated; it has near 500 persons, and it’s increasing with the years. It’s characterized by it proximity to nature and old tradicions.It’s strategically situated due to the fact that it’s surrounded by mountains and Urkiola’s natural park, but during the XVIIIth century mining began and since then, mountains strated being affected up to the point that, nowadays, almost a hole mountain has disappeared.

The first aim of this quarries was to produce an excellent quality marble which is used in construction. As, when this proyect began construction was really developed, many raw materials were needed and thanks to it, Mañaria´s quarries started becoming more and more popular, being the main pillar of this village’s economy.

From Mañaria’s valley, is really impressive how close we are not only from Anboto Mountain, we have Urkiola Mountain too, but presently what it’s much more impressive, it’s the big bite that the five quarries has caused on it. Despite the government, since the last month of the year 2015, have forbid to this type of companies to continue exploiting this resources, but they had continue doing it.

You will ask yourselves, in which stent can this affect to biodiversity, the short answer is that they destroy the wild life in that area plants, animals…, but behind it, there are more complicated reasons. The environment can be straight affected by this big explosions, but the dust and noise, aquatic leaks, soil erosion can produce have bigger consequences.

We will focus the next post in working deeply in the consequences and in the solutions that the mayor, Endika  Jaio, has propose to solve this big problem presented.