The environmentalist Serafim Riem, cofounder of the Quercus association, died on Wednesday, it was announced today.
Born in 1954, a native of Porto, Serafim Riem took part in founding the association in 1985.
In a statement released today, Quercus expressed its sorrow at the death of its founder. “He thought, conceived, gave us the name, traversed the country from end to end, and brought together people and associations then dispersed, inflaming us with the necessary ambition” to create “the largest and most proactive Association for the Defense of Nature in Portugal,” it says.
Quercus noted that such a moment occurred in a time when the preservation of nature “lived in an almost proscribed silence, or confined to the offices of one or another university.”
In the note, the association stated that Quercus marked the defense of the environment in Portugal and was a school where many environmentalists were formed, and that this is Serafim Riem’s greatest legacy.
