The Tenerife Association of Friends of Nature (ATAN) has accused the General Directorate of Coasts and the Arona City Council of destroying one of the few paleontological sites identified in Tenerife as a result of the setback and repair works on the promenade of Los Tarajales beach in Los Cristianos.
As indicated this Tuesday by ATAN in a statement, both public administrations are “usual suspects” of disregarding the natural and cultural values of the Canary Islands and, like the Heritage of the Cabildo of Tenerife, they were aware of the existence of said site.
In fact, the Association continues, a few years ago these same public institutions had already partially destroyed it during the works to add sand to the area, where heavy machinery was used.
At the time, the environmental group warned of this fact in the same way that it had warned about the existence of “a fossil beach of singular relevance” along with other heritage elements, such as a set of bowls and channels of possible archaeological affiliation in its southern end.
“Probably the fossil beach once had a larger area than the one now destroyed, but the continuous denaturation and occupation of the coastline has ended up destroying this site, which was one of the few testimonies of the climatic changes historically produced on the island, both in the marine environment as well as the terrestrial one, and that contained paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic information,” adds ATAN.
In short, he assures, a new loss “for the increasingly damaged natural heritage” of the island of Tenerife, this time at the hands of the General Directorate of Coasts and Management of the Canary Islands maritime space, now attached to the Department of Public Works. , which gives an idea of “the intentionality” that is had with the coastline of the islands; and the Arona City Council, which, in successive mandates and regardless of ideologies, “has been destroying the municipality’s environment with impunity to the point of turning Arona into one of the most denatured territories in the Canary Islands.”
