Six environmental organizations denounce a new situation of chaos in the Teide National Park, the most visited in Europe (four million people on average per year), aggravated by the lack of means to control it. According to these associations, the teams from four audiovisual production shoots “cooped up” the most important parking areas in this natural area declared a World Heritage Site: Minas de San José, Cable Car, Parador de Turismo and Roques de García.
This situation caused visitors, companies that carry out activities in the Teide and the organizations for the defense of nature suffered the consequences of the presence of dozens of trucks and other vehicles from the filming that “occupied numerous places in the natural space”, criticized the Fundación Canaria Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello, Ecologist Coordinator of El Rincón, Ben Magec Ecologists in Action, Association for the Conservation of Canary Biodiversity, Seo Birdlife and the Group of Ornithology and Natural History of the Islands Canary Islands.
“The abandonment of functions by the managing administration has reached such a point, the Council of Tenerifethat even one of the producers has been the one that has recommended to the tourist guides alternative places where to carry out their work of interpretation in view of the total occupation that was going to be made of one of the indicated car parks”, these organizations point out in a statement from joint press.
The six groups detail that «this excessive desire to authorize at the same time such a large number of audiovisual productions has caused a significant percentage of visitors, lacking in sensitivity, to have ended up parking in unauthorized places for this, which has caused damage to the flora and fauna of Teide”, the most protected area of Tenerife that the Cabildo manages.
The filming left visitors who wanted to do activities such as hiking without a place
They also denounce that private security companies hired for the filming “are carrying out functions for which they have no competence, such as regulating traffic and controlling access to certain areas of Teide, in the total absence of security.” Civil Guard and the team from the National Park itself, already lacking sufficient personnel to carry out its work because the Department of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands he is reluctant to take out new places ». Just five forest agents monitor four million visitors a year. This is the reality of the Teide National Park, resources that, according to the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Canary Foundation, are clearly insufficient to care for one of the world’s natural jewels due to the endemic flora it houses and the various traces of volcanism.
The six organizations detail that it has been the case that Film company staff “has unilaterally fenced off parking spaces, outside the initially authorized places.” On occasions, the filming work has even occupied spaces “off the authorized trails” with the technical teams, something “absolutely prohibited” by the Master Plan for the Use and Management of the Teide National Park in force, as indicated in the statement . They recall that according to the Management Plan (PRUG), “uses related to cinematography, radio, television, video, advertising and the like, which are of a professional, commercial or commercial nature, require administrative authorization from the Mixed Management Commission”. “This may delegate to the Park Management the authorizations of all or part of the special uses,” the groups clarify.
They add that the Master Plan of the National Parks Network establishes that “no extraordinary activity may be authorized if it contradicts the rules of the Park, is detrimental to its values or its objectives, has a high risk of causing damage to persons or property, or if it has a significant negative impact on the normal functioning of the park, on the protection of resources or on the use by part of the visitors. These are measures that these organizations understand have not been enforced on Teide.
“We believe that this disaster is motivated by the conception of the Teide National Park by the public administration that manages the space, the Cabildo de Tenerife, which sees it solely as a source of economic resources and tourism promotion for the Island, without the conservation of the natural values that gave rise to its declaration matters the least”, ensure the six associations. Consulted by this newspaper, the Island Councilor for Natural Environment Management and Security, Isabel García, did not offer any assessment of the reported events on Thursday.
