"AMBER on Spanish TV!"

Erundino Alonso, is well-known in Spain as a member of the famous Los Lobos group of the Boom de Antena 3 contest. He is a member of AEMS Ríos con Vida and an active collaborator of the association and the AMBER project.

As a professional in the environmental sector and collaborator of multiple environmental protection initiatives of different associations, he is concerned about the state of our rivers and the problem of river fragmentation.

Translation into English:
Juanma: That shirt is cool, Erundino!

Erundino: It is very pretty, very cool. It is from a project that my association works on. I am very happy to work with this association called AEMS-Ríos con Vida. And this project is a European project called...

Juanma: Watch out!

Erundino: Adaptive Management of Barriers in European Rivers. Let's see, the association--you know that I like fishing--AEMS is an association that was born around fly fishing, but through time the association expended its work field and above all, it is dedicated to the study and conservation of fluvial ecosystems.

Juanma: right, and what do you do?

Erundino: well, basically we try to recover the good ecological status of the water (what the Water Framework Directive says), the good ecological status of our rivers. And this project in particular intends to use citizen participation. Through the citizen science, the project is recording all the obstacles that prevent our rivers from flowing free. Most people think that dams, barriers and so on imply only benefits, and yet they have many problems because rivers are the great veins through which life flows, in the environment.

Juanma: beautiful

Erundino: anyone can understand that a road would not work at all if it had an obstacle every few kilometers that cut it. You would have to go to one side, join again ... The barriers that are in the rivers sometimes are in use but many times, they are not. So this project is intended to remove all those that have no use, which are many. There is more than one transversal obstacle in our rivers per kilometer. It is an absolute barbarity. And well, remove those that do not work. And adapt those that do have a use or if they can have a functionality because it does not mean that they can not have it. Adapt the functional ones so that the ecological status or the ecological functionality of the river can recover or work well.

Juanma: Super cool.

Erundino: We have done ...

Juanma: Ah! He has not finished! ok!

Erundino: We have made a very cool application of AMBER, you can go and see it. You download it to your mobile phone and you can record the information and share it to the app: record the obstacle that is in the river of your town, or in a river when you go hiking, whenever you find it, as a way for citizens to participate. And citizen science is then incorporated into the knowledge of the entire project.

Juanma: ehhh .. it's 8:45 pm, second bomb, 400, options ...