Conservation area under attack

Al Masry Al Youm

The Wadi Degla Natural Protectorate, a geological formation in southeast Cairo that is over 50 million years old, has recently come under threat from illegal quarrying and sand extraction operations. Industrial trucks and loaders have left trails of rubble and piles of rocky sand in the protectorate as evidence of their tampering.

According to Tarek al-Kanawati, the director of the protectorate, these violations have only been reported in a limited area in the northwest sector of the massive valley. Kanawati says that "only an area of 800 square meters has been affected" by these illegal operations. Yet tractor tracks and trails of rubble stretch across the protectorate for at least 3km in the northwest area of Wadi Degla.