General description of the TRINO PROJECT
The TRINO (Interior Rural Tourism and Birdwatching, from the Spanish acronym) Project is a proposal by thirty Local Action Groups (LAG) of the LEADERCAL program of Axis 4 of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in Castilla y León (Spain) whose main objective is to promote birdwatching tourism in the Autonomous Community of Castilla y León.
This region has more than 500 km of signed paths, observatories and other infrastructure for birdwatching. The 250 rural lodging facilities participating in TRINO have pledged to take a series of steps with the goal of offering quality service tailored specifically to ornithological tourists. These establishments provide information about the birds that live in each area and have a total capacity of more than 3,000 guests.
TRINO covers a total geographical area of 62,571.18 km², which makes up more than 52% of the area’s territory; it also represents 1,516 municipalities, or 67.43% of all the municipalities in the Autonomous Community, or, speaking in terms of people, 855,530 residents living in the 30 individual regions, which accounts for 34.33% of Castilla y León’s total population. This includes 16,637.77 km² of territory also included in the Natura 2000 ecological network, meaning that 88% of the Autonomous Community’s territory is included in this EU network.
This geographical area possesses great potential for birdwatching, owing to a wide variety of ecosystems that give it a high level of diversity among its birds, with 361 recorded species, including 218 of the 266 nesting species known to Spain. All of this places position Castilla y León as a birdwatching destination on both a national and European level.