When a few weeks ago a group of environmentalists from the Zero organization visited the Torgal stream, a small tributary of the Mira River located on the outskirts of Odemira, “it was a great sadness.” The words are from Paulo Lucas, leader of the environmental association, who was part of the group that recently discovered the Torgal stream completely dry.
For centuries, that was a permanent watercourse. Now, water shortages may have turned the river into an intermittent waterway that dries up in the summer, as is already the case with dozens of other waterways. The worst of all? That river was the only place on the planet where the Mira scallop lived, a small freshwater fish that was already one of the most endangered species in the country and may now be completely extinct. The only hope is in a small catch where there is still some water, but even there, the existence of several predators is a threat to this small species, which also needs currents to survive.
The trip to Baixo Alentejo was not particularly motivated by the scale of the sight. In fact, the association frequently visits that region of the country to “see the situation of the greenhouses” that abound there and that Zero has denounced as a problem of intensive agriculture that threatens the Natural Park of the Southwest Alentejo and the Vicentine Coast. “We were passing through there and, as we were already connected to the Torgal River, we took a detour on the road and went to check on it. It was a realization… When we saw the bed completely dry, at first we didn’t realize it. But then we started to think: where is the balance?”
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Source: Observadora
