Council plan set to safeguard environmental value of Lagos countryside

A study carried out as part of Lagos Council’s plan to assess the construction potential in an area of the municipality has confirmed the environmental and landscape interest of the Lagos shrubland which citizens of the municipality have been calling for the Council to preserve.

The study, presented and approved at the last meeting of the Municipality of Lagos, confirmed, “with exhaustive and detailed data, what was already foreseen regarding this area of ??very special natural characteristics,” reported the municipality.

Corresponding to the 1st phase of the Council plan to assess the importance of the landscape, the characterization and diagnosis study analysed an area of ??215 hectares (397 with adjacent areas) where the both the biological and geological importance were looked into.

The occupation of the territory (current occupation of the land, landscape, built occupation, infrastructure and cultural and archaeological heritage), the socioeconomic component, and territorial planning are other themes also addressed in the plan.

The great flora diversity is one main characteristics of this territory that is evidence of its environmental importance, as well as the high fauna potential, mainly in the humid zone, evidenced by the 210 species of birds, 32 species of mammals and 17 species of reptiles.

Flamingos, sea bream, red herons, rabbits, otters, geckos, turtles, and snakes are just some of the many species identified, many of them with particular conservation interest.

Cultural interest was also a part of the study, as attested by the various archaeological sites that reveal evidence of a human presence thought to be ancient, long before the Roman presence. According to the study, the built occupation is insignificant (corresponding to 2 percent of the Plan’s area), dispersed and unstructured, with “housing” being the predominant use. However, according to the Municipality of Lagos, “this is an area of high infrastructure in terms of accessibility, water supply, drainage and treatment of sewage, energy, communications and solid urban waste”. The team concluded that it is “an area with natural characteristics and vocations that are important to preserve and enhance, but that presents a set of imbalances in terms of current uses and occupation of the territory that needs to be corrected”.

Therefore, “in the proposal for what will be built in the next stages of this work, the team will have to take into account the fact that the area under analysis corresponds to a territory strongly protected in terms of environmental value”.