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an example of environmental restoration El Porcal, The El Porcal lagoons converted into a natural ecosystem after its environmental restoration. among others. The washing of the aggregates originated a great va- riety of types of sand that was de- posited in the lagoons to form bea- ches, which have been populated with vegetation and small inverte- brates, serving as food for other larger animals. To make El Porcal a biosphere re- serve in the Community of Madrid, the Cementos Portland Valverrivas Group has an agreement with the Naumanni Association of Natura- lists, which has taken care of its fauna and flora. Examples of good practices applied by Naumanni are the great crested grebe, the sca- rab beetle-wasp All these species have found in El Porcal a place to stay, reproduce and enrich the bio- diversity of animal species in the Community of Madrid. The site is home to a multitude of trees, shrubs and plants. Water is the protagonist of this landscape of high ecological value, its lagoons are sheltered by a rich vegetation El Porcal is a former mining opera- tion owned by the Cementos Port- land Valderrivas Group located in the municipality of Rivas Vaciama- drid. It has an area of more than 400 hectares distributed between steppes and wetlands of the lower courses of the Manzanares and Jarama rivers in the Community of Madrid, currently included as Natu- ra 2000 Network sites of the Euro- pean Union. As a result of the conservation stra- tegy that has been applied over the last 30 years, El Porcal has now become one of the protected areas with the greatest natural wealth in the Southeast Regional Park of Madrid, included as an Integral Reserve and declared a protected area in 1994. It is home to more than 180 species of animals, many of which are threatened with ex- tinction, and it is our duty to protect them in order to preserve them. Until 2008, aggregates of diffe - rent granulometric composition were obtained from this site for the construction and development of infrastructures, as well as for the cement, glass and paint industries, In the heart of the Southeast Regional Park of Madrid and about 40 kilometers from the capital, in themunicipality of Rivas Vaciamadrid, is the El Porcal estate, a silica aggregate gravel pit converted into a natural ecosystem, declared a protected area in 1994, which is part of the sedimentary basin of the Jarama and Manzanares rivers. cement B U S I N E S S 18 B U S I N E S S