310 trees donated to various local councils

has often been neglected at policy, monitoring and implementation actions in many Mediterranean countries. In fact, few of us know that noise in our seas may be devastating for species that need to communicate or find food or mates by being able to listen for relevant sounds that may be masked by the noise present in the sea. Very much like when someone is trying to talk to another person with a loud band playing in the background, not to mention the stress and health hazards to humans having to suffer loud noise for prolonged periods of the day or night. Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government and Communities Silvio Parnis, in collaboration with the private sector, donated 310 trees to the Mdina, Fgura, Ħamrun, St Julian’s, Gudja, Marsa, and Santa Luċija local councils.

During a press conference, Parliamentary Secretary Parnis stated that our country must continue raising awareness about the importance of trees and also referred to the educational campaign ‘The Call of the Trees’ which he launched last year. The Parliamentary Secretary also reiterated that these initiatives continue helping our local councils embellish their localities and at the same time continue improving our environment. Silvio Parnis also mentioned one of the proposals found in the local government reform white paper. This proposal states that local councils will be provided with endemic plants and trees by the ministry responsible for the environment, to be planted in their localities.

He concluded by praising these local councils for taking the initiative of requesting a number of trees for their localities and encouraged all local councils to do the same.

The Marine Directive 2008/56/CE, specifically the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, represents a vital way forward to preserve the marine environment as it aims to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020. It therefore also highlights the need to establish anthropogenic noise levels that do not affect marine Biota (Descriptor 11). These levels need to be measured according to the established standards many of which are entranced in the same directive.

The quietMED project has received funding from the DG Environment, European Commission to device better coordination among member states that share marine regions and sub-regions to increase the protection level and the conservation status of Mediterranean marine spaces against the damages caused by anthropogenic underwater noise.

QuietMED, through its Mediterranean pilot projects for monitoring marine