This summer BICREF has been actively undertaking both coastal and marine biodiversity surveys. Among the sites it has monitored one finds Ramla Bay in Gozo. Foreign Students through YSES, UK, came to Gozo and worked with BICREF at Ramla, undertaking both terrestrial and marine surveys during their summer stay in Gozo.

BICREF believes that ecotourism should be encouraged while mass tourism needs to be optimized and better handled due to the limited resources and the small sizes of the islands. Our beaches and coasts are clearly not kept clean enough and still are place for: vandalism; selfish and careless neglect of the rubbish produced and left behind;
and exploitation. Also environmental protection locally needs a more holistic approach rather than superficial considerations of single sites.

As one of our typical and unique habitats, Ramla Bay deserves careful monitoring and management. BICREF has thus taken this monitoring on board, as a voluntary contribution to local nature conservation and to assist GAIA foundation in improving its future management actions.

BICREF''s members, with the increasing assistance from foreign volunteers, carefully study Ramla''s biodiversity as often as possible in order to follow seasonal, annual and human-caused changes, with the hope that this natural gem will be passed on to future generations in a healthy and biologically functional way able to persist and evolve.