The director of the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station, Eloy Revilla, pointed out this Monday at the extraordinary plenary session of the Doñana participation council held in Almonte (Huelva) that the national park is in a “critical state” and that “more than half of its gaps have disappeared”.
This has been indicated in his speech at the extraordinary plenary session held to analyze the bill that seeks to regularize the irrigated areas in the vicinity of Doñana, presented in the PP and Vox in the Andalusian Parliament.
Revilla recalled that Spain “is condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to comply with its obligations derived from the Water Framework Directive and the Habitat Directive”. He recalled that the sentence condemns Spain for “not having taken into account the illegal extraction of water for cultivation and the extraction of water for urban supply in the estimation of the total extractions of groundwater in the region and for not having foreseen any measure to avoid the alteration caused by the extraction of groundwater on the types of habitats classified as priority”.
Likewise, he has presented some of the data generated by the scientific activity of the Doñana Biological Station, which “is yielding devastating results, both in relation to the state of the lagoons and other habitats of the natural space and to the biodiversity that depends on them “.
In this way, he explained that in the latest study published in the scientific journal Science of The Total Environment, the data “show that the deterioration of the Doñana lagoon system is widespread. It has been found that 59% of the lagoons with the highest size of Doñana have not been flooded since at least 2013”.
“These changes are significantly related to the temperature and precipitation of each year, but also to the extension of cultivated areas, the constructed surface in Matalascañas, the distance to the pumping stations of the urbanization and the operation of the golf course” , has pointed out the CSIC.
According to the data, 80% of these lagoons dried up earlier than expected due to observed precipitation and temperature and 84% had a smaller flood area than what had been predicted based on the same parameters, indicating that Human activity is altering the natural balance of the lagoons.
“In Mediterranean systems, droughts are recurrent, but when the succession of years without flooding exceeds this recurrence, the vegetation of the lagoons disappears and they are colonized by terrestrial vegetation, which ends with the complete disappearance of the lagoons and the loss of habitats cataloged by the Directive”, explained the director of the Doñana Biological Station.
“This is what has happened with 19% of the lagoons sampled in the study, which have already completely disappeared. In addition, another 19% have more than half of their basin invaded by scrub and pine trees and only 10%, mainly located on the vera, they remain in good condition”, he pointed out.
On the other hand, he has stated that the three lagoons that functioned as permanent, that is, those that did not dry up in summer (as the vast majority of the Doñana lagoons do) “have ceased to be so.”
For example, the lagoons of El Sopetón and La Dulce, which only occasionally dried up, “now dry up frequently.” The situation of Santa Olalla, the largest permanent lagoon in Doñana, “has been extreme in the summer of 2022, in which it completely dried up.”
In this regard, he pointed out that “this whole situation is having repercussions on the unique fauna and vegetation of Doñana.” For example, by shortening the flooding period of temporary lagoons, amphibians “have lost a large part of their breeding sites”, as well as another group “seriously threatened” by the loss of aquatic habitats is that of fish.
In relation to the proposed law (PDL) presented in Parliament, Eloy Revilla has stated that “the current exploitation of the aquifer is not sustainable. More resources are being extracted than are regenerated annually through precipitation recharge, which is variable and decreasing, so this natural resource is being depleted”.
In addition, he has stated that the “uncontrolled” proliferation of irrigated crops “without the corresponding authorizations” has been “caused by a clear governance failure on the part of the competent administrations.” At this point, he believes that there is a “clear lack of political will” when it comes to solving the problem. “This executive inaction is what has led us to the unsustainable critical point in which Doñana finds itself,” he assured.
According to the director of the Doñana Biological Station, the need to provide water to the farms that appear in the PDL “makes the urgent solution of the problem even more difficult.” “The current situation of Doñana is critical and does not allow us to wait another decade for decisions to adjust the demand for water to availability,” he stated.
“If this were done, we would be imposing, contrary to current legislation, the complete loss of temporary lagoon systems and other habitats dependent on the aquifer. Additionally, if we do not act urgently, the depletion of the resource will cause legal exploitations to have problems to irrigate, as is already happening in this 2022-2023 campaign, putting at risk all the economic activity that depends on the aquifer”, he stressed.
Revilla has stressed that climate change is changing precipitation patterns and these changes “will intensify in the future.” These indicate “a clear decrease in available water”, but that “however, the demand for water in the Doñana region has not stopped increasing”.
“For example, irrigation in the forest crown went from 2,162 hectares in 2004 to 3,543 ha in 2014, which represents an increase of more than 30% in just ten years. Today the area occupied today is even greater.”
Finally, he stressed that the problem Doñana is facing is “very complex” and that “its solution will also have to be”, given the “false expectations created”, which “a priori we know cannot be met”. “All of that just adds complexity to the problem.”
“A childish dialectic is used, of good and bad, which only seeks to confront different parts of society, using absurd messages”, he criticized before adding that “it is important to remember that, in order to be economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, the Human activities, including economic ones, require a predictable and well-preserved environment”.
On the other hand, among his proposals to prevent further degradation of the natural space is to “urgently” reduce the total amount of water that is extracted from the aquifer to levels that “allow the start of its recovery.” “Only in this way can its exploitation be sustainable, both in the short, medium and long term.”
There is also the task of updating the system for evaluating the state of the aquifer and carrying out annual evaluations of the availability of water from the aquifer “to define the maximum quantities that can be extracted from it,” among others.
