About twenty students between the ages of 18 and 65 from the Candelaria City Council’s Vocational Training in Interpretation and Environmental Education program toured the Samarines ravine last week, in a citizen science training activity in which, through the use of an application mobile, contribute to the identification of the corrugated chuchanga (Hemicycla plicataria).
This Samarines snail is the emblem of the municipality and is in critical danger of extinction, according to the Red Book of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The activity has been organized by the University of La Laguna and the Loro Parque Fundación, through a project of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (FECYT) called Raising awareness about the effects of climate change through transmedia communication, led by researchers from Journalism, Biology and Education from the University of La Laguna.
IUCN experts participate in this interdisciplinary project, who, in a coordinated manner, have been developing various research actions to assess the status of various species of terrestrial gastropods, as well as dissemination activities for the knowledge and awareness of citizens, through the collective construction of informative messages.
During the training day, the FP students formed an environmental patrol to collaborate with the municipality, through the use of the apps INaturalist (National Geographic) that facilitates the identification of specimens in the field and with which information on the existence of individuals of the species is contributed. In this way, the local community becomes a participant in the work of raising awareness about endangered species.
The main purpose of the project is to disseminate the results of scientific research on climate change carried out by Canarian public universities, through the use of communication strategies different from the traditional ones, known as “transmedia narratives”, and that encourage the collective construction of messages , through social participation, thus increasing interest in the subject and the dissemination and scope of the results of research and innovation financed with public funds.
The purpose of the aid promoted by the national program for the Promotion of Scientific, Technological and Innovation Culture (FECYT), is to “generate scientific knowledge about the communication of science to contribute to its social projection and, in this case, to raise awareness about the state of for the conservation of critically endangered gastropod species, unique in the world and only found in Tenerife”, indicated Patricia Delponti, Professor of Journalism and principal investigator of the project.
The Loro Parque Fundación has also wanted to be part of this awareness initiative, in line with “its firm commitment to caring for the environment,” said Javier Almunia, director of said foundation and of the CanBIo project, which since 2019 has been investigating the effects of change change in the marine and terrestrial biodiversity of the Canary Islands, financed by Loro Parque and the Government of the Canary Islands, with a budget of more than two million euros.
The multidisciplinary research team of the University of La Laguna has been made up of Patricia Delponti, Alberto Ardévol, Carmen Rodríguez Wangüemert, Fernando Rosa, Jonás Lübke, Carolina Castillo, Penélope Cruzado, Antonio Ortega, Sara González, María Gabino and Milena Trenta, attached to to different departments of the academic institution.
On the International Day of Biodiversity established by the United Nations Organization, the municipality of Candelaria values this type of initiative that provides decision makers with the best data available to place nature at the center of development sustainable, based on the premise that resources and biodiversity are the pillars that sustain civilizations.
The extraordinary richness in endemism of the Canary Islands means that on some occasions a single municipal term can harbor a unique threatened species in the world. That is the case of Candelaria, because in its municipal area there is this species of critically endangered invertebrate that cannot be found anywhere else on the planet.
About the Chuchanga de Samarines
The corrugated chuchanga is endemic to Tenerife and was distributed along the low-lying areas of the southeast coast, although it is now restricted to fragmented populations in the municipality of Candelaria associated with sweet tabaibales below 250 meters of altitude. In the last 30 years there has been a significant decline in this species, due to various factors linked to human activity in the area.
