We are happy to hear news from Spanish and Andorran colleagues. Spanish team works hard, but time is running out. Well, we can cheer them up and wish really great results from their intensive work.
«On the Catalan Wikipedia we have been working on lists of Andorra and three regions of Spain: Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Valencian Community. It has been a hard work. Previous experience with Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Public Art has been helful for working with this kind of lists, but in that case there is not an unique register of natural heritage sites. In Andorra there is little information about natural protected areas. In Spain the legal situation is quite confusing. The same area can have different protection levels and denominations. We contacted the local natural heritage office in Barcelona and they provided us more information helping to clarify concepts and thus to make more comprehensive lists of sites.
The collaborating natural heritage office of the government of Catalonia has become a partner for organizing the contest. Their press department will help with promotion. The tourism office of the province of Girona has collaborated in previous editions of Wiki Loves Monuments and they were willing to sponsor a prize for Wiki Loves Earth. We plan to offer ten prizes distributed on a territorial basis in order to try to spread the contest to all territories and to promote specially more unknown natural sites. Local agents will organize photographic expeditions to areas of interest conducted by specialists.
For jury members we have contacted two professional photographers with experience photographing nature. They have made a lot of questions about free licenses from their professional point of view, but they have understood the purpose of the project and they join it without any reserve. Other members of the jury will be two scholars of natural heritage and two experimented Wikipedians. This composition of the jury reflects three basic points to evaluate: quality, representativeness and utility for Wikipedia.
There is still work to do but we are excited about this, as well as Wikipedians and sponsors are»