The latest rains have been a “great relief” for the Doñana Natural Park but they have not solved the important problem that the area suffers with an overexploited aquifer on the verge of collapsing.
The rainfall that irrigated the South in March and April has managed to “stop the mortality of the vegetation” and to “fill the marshes”, as Eloy Revilla, director of the Doñana Biological Station (EBD), explained in an interview, but It has not been enough to get out of “the critical moment” because filling the aquifer “takes a long time.”
Revilla explained that the rains have meant that “the situation has changed” and that it is “a relief” for Doñana, “where the mortality of the vegetation, for example, was being very important, and these rains have allowed us to stop this mortality massive pine forest, cork oak, scrubland, which are very dependent on soil water.
“The marsh has also taken on water, it is around 80% of the surface flooded, a little less likely, although there is little water. The depth is small and it is going down at a high speed because it rained late, it is hotter than normal and This means that the duration of the marsh flooding will be reduced, and we will see if the birds have time to reproduce,” he detailed.
Likewise, he has emphasized the lagoons, because these are “practically dry, specifically 2% of them have water, with a more or less anecdotal surface.” “The only ones that have taken water are those that are lower down, those that tended to be permanent, like the Santa Olalla or La Dulce lagoon itself, but they have little water,” he added.
However, Revilla has insisted that although the situation “has improved”, Doñana still “has not left the critical moment.” “Recovering an aquifer is something that takes a long time, since the amount of water that has fallen is still a little below the average precipitation in a normal hydrological year. It rained a lot in the month of March, which has been very welcome, but it has not yet allowed us to recover, or even reach the average rainfall. Recovering an aquifer, which is like a large accumulation of water in the subsoil, is something that takes years,” he stressed.
On the other hand, asked about the uses of water in the tourist center of Matalascañas, in Almonte (Huelva), Revilla indicated that it is “part of the same problem, the overexploitation of the aquifer.” In this sense, he has highlighted that “the problem is that more water is being used from the aquifer than it recharges annually and Matalascañas is part of the problem along with the crops.”
“There is a plan to convert the drilling points from where the Matalascañas water is extracted, move them to the west temporarily and, subsequently, make a pipeline that brings the surface water to ensure that it does not have an impact on the most low discharge of the aquifer on the coast and it is very important to maintain this discharge so that the aquifer does not become salinized,” he noted.
On the other hand, regarding the announcement by the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Moreno, that the Participation Council will be the one that will decide the action, development and protection plan for Veta La Palma, Revilla has stressed that the purchase of this farm has been “good news” and “the commitment to restore this area of ??marsh in the medium and long term is very important for a place like Doñana.”
In this regard, he explained that this farm “ceased being profitable due to the very poor state of conservation of the estuary, which has great turbidity and poor water quality, which made it unprofitable to produce fish”, since it is “a highly transformed area of ??marshland, which if it is no longer used for production loses the value it also had for the conservation of Doñana’s birds.”
In this sense, he stressed that it is necessary to analyze “how we manage to maintain, in the most natural way possible, that southern area of ??Isla Mayor so that it has and maintains that conservation value at the lowest possible cost.”
