The purpose of the CARISMA project is to help protect, integrate and preserve water resources of the Spanish-Portuguese border territories, by achieving an international cooperation in order to preserve the environment and enhance the rivers Trancoso and Laboreiro, as well as their surroundings, with the purpose of including both rivers in the network of fluvial corridors, capable of structuring the preserved areas which make up Red Natura 2000.

Coordinated management of international basins

Several natural rivers have been found in the hydrographic basins of rivers Miño-Minho and Limia-Lima. Those rivers have a very good environmental and good chemical status and most of them have already been considered headers and masses of reference.

Two of them, Laboreiro river (Limia-Lima basin) and Trancoso-Troncoso river (Miño-Minho basin), are international, which means that their management is shared by Portugal and Spain through much of their length.

As a result of the joint management, the Spanish and Portuguese water administration authorities propose, in their hydrologic plans, that the Laboreiro and Trancoso rivers be declared River Nature Reserves, in order to preserve river stretches where there is little or no human influence.

By means of the Network of River Nature Reserves, the Hydrographic Confederation of Miño-Sil and the Authority of the Hydrographic Region of North I.P aims to achieve the following:

1) To protect and preserve river stretches which have not been altered by human action

2) To maintain river stretches that are representative of biological diversity and to use these stretches as points of reference within the scope of the objectives set by the  Water Framework Directive (WFD)

3) To achieve a real network of biological corridors of fluvial nature capable of structuring the preserved areas which make up Red Natura 2000.