Nearly a hundred people attended the invitation of the non-profit association Alisios Norte to discuss the new Master Plan for Use and Management (PRUG) of the Teide National Park, whose period of allegations ends on July 22. The meeting, which took place at the La Gañanía events center in Puerto de la Cruz, was attended by Jaime Coello, director of the Telesforo Bravo-Juan Coello Foundation; Pedro Millán, member of the National Mountaineering Federation; José Luis Figueroa, chief of staff of the Regional Council for Ecological Transition; Juan Pedro Hernández, geographer and former member of the Teide National Board, and Sergio González, director of Gaiatours Travel, a sustainable tourism company.
The participants agreed on the need to address the load capacity of a unique space such as the Teide National Park., a World Heritage Site “which must be handed down to future generations in the best possible conditions”. The main discrepancies arose when addressing the uses prohibited in the new document. Jaime Coello showed his concern about the “critical” situation in the conservation of biodiversity. He considers it necessary to “increase protection against the massive visit of tourists and canaries that deteriorate the natural space.”
Pedro Millán criticized, for his part, the methodology used to prepare the PRUG “because of its lack of rigor, without previous studies that guarantee the load capacity and without taking into account the opinion of those who know the Park best, such as mountaineers ». For Millán, “the document is full of unjustified prohibitions and without providing solutions in terms of the material and human resources required by the Park.” “People are restless because Teide is part of our identity,” he concluded.
On behalf of the Ministry, José Luis Figueroa spoke of the document on public display as “a necessary tool that had to be renewed”. He added that “carrying capacity must be managed correctly and scientists must be listened to”. He also highlighted that the participation process is underway and there is time to improve the document.
The geographer Juan Pedro Hernández pointed out that private interests “cannot take precedence over the necessary conservation that a legal framework that has not been respected in recent years must comply with.” Sergio González valued: «Organized and respectful tourism with the environment is not negative».
The subsequent debate made it clear that this is a very sensitive issue “that must be addressed through consensus and participation.”
Filming and return “to kilometer zero”
The Minister of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, José Antonio Valbuena, insisted on Radio Club Tenerife that the draft of the new PRUG of the Teide National Park “is susceptible to changes to be agreed”. The three service areas designed in the forecast of the Mobility Plan as bases for the shuttle buses “would be outside the Park” and he advances that “filming fits, but with requirements such as valuing the setting and not simulating other landscapes.” The mayor of La Orotava, Francisco Linares, “rejected” the PRUG, asked “to have the opinion of the public” and a return to “kilometre zero of the process.” Finally, the president of the PP of the Canary Islands, Manuel Domínguez, defended “paralyzing the processing” of the Teide PRUG “in the absence of consensus and because it is a document that is limited to prohibiting or increasing restrictions on multiple activities.”
