Infoca personnel have been busy with their winter tasks, which is based on preventing fire, so as not to have to put them out come summer.

In this particular case they were burning off potential combustible material (vegetation) on Monte Público Cerros de Abajo y Manar, which lie within the municipality of Padul.

Thirty infoca personnel, with two fire trucks worked on 16 hectares of public land.

This sort of work has two benefits; the first is as we mentioned above, but secondly, as a training exercise for new firefighters, working with real fires (although completely under control).

Another reason for clearing the undergrowth is to provide nesting areas for the alondra ricotí or Dupont’s lark. It is a ground-nesting bird and is in danger of extinction. It breeds across much of northern Africa, from Algeria to Egypt, and in Spain and France. It is a non-migratory resident and is a species that commonly inhabits open land or with little areas with vegetation.

However, it has experienced 3.9% annual population ddrop in Spain with a 32.8% decrease from 2008 to 2018, shifting its conservation status to vulnerable on the national level and endangered in the regions of Andalusia and Castile-León.

(News/Noticias: Padul, Valle de Lecrin, Granada, Andalucia)