Miguel Gómez, owner of Cuadras Zamorano, in El Rosario, has seen his facilities turned into a “mini noah’s ark” after welcoming horses, dogs, cats, rabbits and guinea pigs of people evicted by the Forest fire that has plagued the island since last Tuesday.
In his case, he has not been evacuated because the blocks are on the border between El Rosario and La Laguna, but, according to EFE, from the early hours of Wednesday he began to manage the transfer of animals from people who were evicting in the upper part of the town, in El Poleo.
It was also prepared to welcome the more than 50 horses from a stable in Los Brezos, in Aguagarcía (Tacoronte) that was about to be evicted in a preventive manner due to the arrival of smoke, for which reason the Tenerife Equestrian Federation He set up an operation looking for free blocks to distribute them because evacuating so many animals “is not done in an hour.”
Fortunately, it was not necessary to carry it out when the direction of the wind changed, says Miguel Gómez, who indicates that from the beginning they brought him horses from people evacuated in the vicinity of the Forest House.
And yesterday “they were about to bring me sheep”, he continues his story, to add that, luckily, only a little smoke from the fire has reached his location.
The most important thing is that the lives of people and animals have been preserved “but we have to react,” says Miguel Gómez, who is a promoter of the recovery of livestock trails and public roads in the Canary Islands, and who asks the Minister of the Environment of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Blanca Pérez, to raise Next Generation funds for this purpose.
In this regard, he recalls that just before the end of the previous term, the Cabildo de Tenerife approved two motions promoted by the Canary Islands Coalition to exercise powers in the matter of livestock routes, but they have not materialized.
In principle, the fire is minimally affecting these roads because it is concentrated in the forest crown, but Miguel Gómez stresses the importance of proceeding with the administrative classification of these traditional cattle roads that remain in “totally abandoned” midlands areas.
However, other autonomous communities have already claimed the aforementioned European funds to rehabilitate these traditional paths and “georeference” them, but “nothing has changed here”, regrets Miguel Gómez.
