2024-01-31 12:53:40
Patricia del Gallo Oviedo
Updated Wednesday, January 31, 2024 – 14:26
Calmly delighting in the landscape and enjoying it in silence is increasingly difficult in natural and curiously more protected areas, such as the Covadonga lakesin full Picos de Europa National Park. The feeling of visitors, in the summer, is that of “overcrowding and discomfort.” This is said by a study carried out by scientists from three Spanish universities through Europarc.
For almost two years, the park’s reception capacity, ecological impact and level of visitor satisfaction were analyzed. 472 surveys were carried out and their data was crossed with others such as the number of people who visit the lakes in each season. Thus, it was concluded, for example, that 89 percent of the people they spoke with had had the feeling of “saturation and overcrowding” and reported that they found neither the silence nor the solitude with which they had come to see the landscape. Furthermore, in a similar percentage, they stated that they were in favor of restricting access to the area, in some way.
For this reason, the study concludes that the park should accommodate a maximum of 1,800 people a day, but that capacity was exceeded on 20 percent of the days in 2021. There was one day, August 5 of that year, that recorded 7,550 visitors.
To avoid that feeling of saturation that occurs at certain times of the year, the study proposes restricting access in some way. Since 90 percent of visitors arrive by bus, it could, the text says, “establish a limited number of reservations for places per day through a website.” There is already a bus service to access the area, but there is no access restriction. As the principal investigator of the study points out, Javier Gómez-Limón García. “No one likes to walk through Los Lagos as if it were Madrid’s Gran Vía on a December long weekend.”
A trail created by the massive passage of visitors.EM
Commissioned in 2021 by the organization National Parks at Europac, forum of experts and professionals who work in defense of nature and the improvement of natural spaces, the report does not only talk about visitor sensations. He concludes that some tourist practices are putting the area’s ecosystem at risk. As it explains Gómez-Limón. “People put their feet and hands in the lakes of Covadonga, without realizing that, by doing so, just with the creams they put on, they are already affecting the environment. Not to mention when someone walks along the edge of the water or who lets the dogs bathe and remove sediment from the bottom, sometimes spreading diseases that are attacking the population of amphibians, reptiles and fish. And this, he remembers, despite the fact that bathing in the area is expressly prohibited. For this reason, experts propose fencing the shores of the lakes Enol y Ercinawithout a doubt the most popular and photographed areas National Park.
But walking is also modifying the landscape. There are areas, says the study, “where the passage of visitors has already affected the vegetation so much that small paths have been made.” For this reason, they propose to restore and close some roads that have completely lost vegetation and define, through signage, a single transit path.
Numerous visitors at one of the viewpoints of the Lakes of Covadonga.EM
The expert authors of the study believe that the public should be informed through posters of the effects of their visit, encouraging them to be respectful of the environment. Explaining to them why certain measures are taken, such as fencing. They believe that is the best measure. “Prohibiting is very difficult because there are not enough guards to be on top of visitors all day,” Gómez-Limón acknowledges: “You can’t leave everything to prohibition.”
The study was presented to the National Parks Board on December 20 and, for now, no community has proposed any measure. What’s more, in that telematic meeting, the mayors of the municipalities that belong to the park, from Asturias, Cantabria and Castilla y León, managed to have the study removed from the agenda, to be analyzed later.
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