Quercus alert: 28% of areas affected by lithium prospection are “protected”

Quercus, one of Portugal’s oldest environmental NGOs, is drawing attention to the fact that 28% of the areas affected by the threat of lithium prospection are ostensibly protected. “We are talking about areas that the Portuguese State has promised to protect and safeguard, which have unique reasons for conservation and models of development”. Just as television pundit José Miguel Judice has commented that environment minister João Pedro Matos Fernandes ‘doesn’t seem up for the job’, Quercus has shown that it is ready to throw its weight behind the myriad communities desperately trying to protect internationally-recognised heritage landscapes that sustain their rural ways of life.