A detachment of the Civil Guard will permanently monitor the National Park of the Teide for the first time. It was announced this Friday by Pedro Martín, president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, which detailed that the service will start imminently, probably from next week. The team from the armed institute, which initially will have four members, will have facilities provided by the Island Corporation in El Portillo, as well as several vehicles.
The president of Tenerife responds in this way to the criticism from environmental groups for the lack of means to control the activities of the most visited national park in Europe, with an annual average of about four million people. “It is clear that we were lax in the surveillance of Teide and that it was necessary to reinforce the personnel given the enormous surface of this space,” admitted Martín, who clarified that until now the Benemérita reinforced the controls on the top of the island but only from punctual way. “Now they will have a fixed presence,” she explained.
The Civil Guard checkpoint is the first measure, but the president announced others for the future, such as the efforts being made with the Government of the Canary Islands to increase the number of forest agents in the National Park. At this time, the protected space, of great natural wealth due to the numerous endemic species and volcanic manifestations, only has five environmental agents. To these will now be added the permanent team of the Civil Guard.
The agents of the armed institute will be deployed especially for the day. The agreement of council With the body, it contemplates that this detachment will increase its members and the operating time to 24 hours in the coming months. It is the result, as revealed by Pedro Martín, of the efforts made by the Island Councilor for Natural Environment Management and Security, Isabel García. “The counselor has been negotiating this reinforcement in security for some time and she has crystallized with this first agreement,” said the leader of the Tenerife socialists.
Pedro Martín’s announcement comes one day after six environmental organizations denounced a new situation of chaos in the Teide National Park, aggravated by the lack of means for its control. According to these associations, the teams from four audiovisual production shoots “copied” the most important parking areas in this natural area declared a World Heritage Site in 2007: Minas de San José, Cable Car, Parador de Turismo and Roques de García.
We were slacking off watching Teide; it was necessary to strengthen the media
This situation caused the visitors, the companies that organize activities on Teide and nature defense organizations suffer the consequences of the presence of dozens of vehicles from the filming that “occupied numerous places in the natural space”, criticized the Canarian Foundation Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello, Ecologist Coordinator of El Rincón, Ben Magec Ecologists in Action, Association for the Conservation of Canarian Biodiversity , Seo Birdlife and the Islands Ornithology and Natural History Group Canary Islands.
These are not the only situations of indiscipline that these groups have denounced. Others have accumulated in recent months that have to do with prohibited activities for which little or nothing can be done due to the lack of means for control and surveillance: advertising spots that skip regulatory paths, people who travel through space on horseback, others who use prohibited vehicles or even some visitors who start playing at soccer or to make chops. The situation of misgovernment is such that environmental groups warn that the consequences on a very fragile fauna and flora may be irreversible if a solution is not found.
The Department of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands has clarified that security management depends on the Cabildo but the agents of the National Park are within its competence. The sources from the area headed by José Antonio Valbuena add that the Ministry has focused first on efforts to regularize the agents and is already working on expanding the force in all natural spaces, especially in the four Canarian national parks.
Pending the approval of the Master Plan for the Use and Management of Teide, promoted by the Canarian Government. This framework provides for three macro-infrastructures for shuttle buses and other services in the National Park in order to alleviate human pressure on this space that occupies 19,000 hectares and contains 139 species of flora, a third of which are endemic to the Canary Islands, highlighting among these the Teide violet and the tajinaste.
In addition to its natural values and being the highest point in Spain (3,715 meters according to the latest official measurements), Teide has great historical importance. It was a sacred mountain for the Guanches, who called it “Echeyde”, which meant “home of Guayota, the Evil One”.
