The Board will buy for about 70 million euros 7,500 hectares of the ‘Veta La Palma’ farm, located in La Puebla del Río (Seville), to expand the surface of the Doñana National Park by 14% and thus avoid the desiccation of a large area of ??high ecological value.
According to the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, during his speech at the ABC Forum, this is the largest environmental operation carried out in the last 45 years in Doñana, after the expansion of 1978. The objective is to prevent 3,500 hectares from drying out. They house 60% of the birds.
To this end, the Board plans to keep the area that is at risk of ceasing to have water due to the closure of the region’s fish farms flooded, and thus avoid the loss of the biodiversity of this space and the negative repercussions on habitats and animal species.
The Andalusian Government highlights that this is the most important operation to incorporate land into public ownership since the declaration of the Doñana National Park.
“We have contacted the owners, with whom we have a closed agreement in principle, and the purchase will be around 70 million euros, a quite reasonable purchase,” said Moreno, who considers that this operation is “necessary” to improve the Doñana wetlands.
According to the Autonomous Government, this is the only way “to avoid a severe blow” to the Doñana National Park, and prevent more than 3,500 hectares that are currently artificially flooded from having water behind the fish ponds.
If there is a lack of water on the land, the Executive emphasizes, the consequences will be very negative: “It will reduce the diversity of habitats and the adaptation capacity of the entire wetland to climate change will be drastically reduced.”
The aquaculture birdlife, which at some times of the year numbers more than 300,000 aquatic birds, 60% of the Doñana bird census, would disappear in an area without flooding, which is currently also the habitat of 1,200 pairs of 17 species of threatened birds, rare or vulnerable.
With this purchase, the 7,500 hectares of the ‘Veta La Palma’ farm will become public property and a scientific research process will be opened by the universities and the Ministry of Sustainability, in order to improve the environmental conditions of this wetland.
This process will end with the drafting of a Strategic Plan of Environmental Actions for Doñana.
The ultimate objective of this research and investment process is for this Natural Area to also be considered a National Park, so that its surface area would increase by 14%.
“Maintaining the current biodiversity of Doñana and strengthening for the near future its resilience and capacity to adapt to the changes that are coming, are the major objectives to be achieved with public management of ‘Veta La Palma’,” the Board emphasizes in a statement.
The researcher of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and director of the Doñana Biological Station, Eloy Revilla, has considered the purchase by the Government of Andalusia of 7,500 hectares of the ‘Veta La Palma’ farm to be “good news”. , located in La Puebla del Río (Seville), to expand the surface of the Park, “as long as it is accompanied by a restoration plan for the island” and “planning and monitoring of the new conditions.”
Revilla has explained that ‘Veta La Palma” is an island located next to the Guadalquivir River that for years has been “a place of fish production”, so in it “there are a series of ponds where fish is or was produced and whose economic viability has been decreasing basically due to the poor state of conservation of the estuary”.
“The excess sediment in the Guadalquivir estuary, in the water taken to fill those ponds, prevented fish breeding. Therefore, the economic activity of fish production ceased a couple of years ago,” he detailed.
This circumstance, as he has assured, has “an impact on conservation”, given that ‘Veta La Palma’ has “a relevant value for the bifauna at times when there is no water in other places, precisely because of those water pumps in those rafts.”
Therefore, he stressed that it is “good news” for the park “as long as it is accompanied by a restoration of that island, planning with scientific criteria and monitoring of the new conditions that will be generated there.”
“For the marsh system, the restoration of ‘Veta La Palma’, together with the connection of the Guadiamar River channel with the marsh in the north, are two actions that can have a positive impact on the conservation status of the Doñana marshlands” , has added.
Likewise, he said that ‘Veta La Palma’ is a breeding place for some species of threatened gulls and a wintering place for some birds, such as the black-tailed godwits, which “are threatened and which is the main place on which they depend during the winter.” “.
Furthermore, the director of the Doñana Biological Station has pointed out that the park is in the “worst situation in decades”, since the drought is extreme and the recent rains have not meant much, because between eight and fifteen liters have fallen. “, although the “temperature has dropped, which is good news”, so they expect that autumn and winter will be “wet” but that “does not guarantee that the situation will improve.”
Given this, Revilla has pointed out that it is “necessary” that the different management and conservation actions that are being implemented by both the central Government, “with the connection of the Guadiamar with the marsh”, and the Board, “be coordinated”, and that ” the different administrations generate a single plan to design these plans on a large scale, in the medium term, within what the Doñana Participation Council has called Doñana 2030, so that the effectiveness is as great as possible.”
The coordinator of the WWF office in Doñana, Juanjo Carmona, has noted the announcement by the president of the Andalusian Government, Juanma Moreno, as “interesting”, but has stated that “buying this is not a solution to the problems of the lagoons, nor of water theft in the County of Huelva, nor does it compensate for the attempt to approve the PDL for irrigation.
Carmona has pointed out that this farm is a fish farm that “it would be interesting” to recover in the context of Doñana and the Guadalquivir estuary “so that it could be added to all the restoration projects that are taking place in the Bajo Guadalquivir area and that “should to seek the renaturalization of all this”, so that “it can have flood plains”, which “would be the most interesting thing in terms of also providing security to the Lower Guadalquivir”.
“But looking at it in the context of the Doñana water, this cannot be presented as a solution to the park, that is false, it is a piece to renaturalize the Bajo Guadalquivir, to renaturalize areas of Doñana and to have a diversity of ecosystems that function throughout the year as Doñana has always had. But buying this does not solve the problem of the lagoons, buying this does not solve the problem of water theft in the county, nor does it compensate for the attempt to pass the law so that agro-pirates can continue stealing water from the aquifer,” Carmona stressed.
Likewise, the WWF coordinator in Doñana has pointed out that the fact that there are “many birds now in ‘Veta La Palma’ is giving the signal that it is because the marsh is dry and the lagoons have no water.”
Furthermore, he assured that this announcement “occurs in a week in which he knows that he is going to receive bad news from UNESCO and tries to compensate for that bad news, since he has reiterated that this “is not a solution and much less can it be serve as a smokescreen to justify the anti-Doñana law.”
At this point, he stated that after the purchase “the project would have to be studied to renaturalize it” because “it has been a fish farm for many years, but it would be illogical to maintain it as such in the future” because “the costs are immense” and “in fact “The company leaves him because of it, because the accounts don’t work out.”
Therefore, he considers that for the recovery of Doñana it would be “important” that the path forward is to achieve “a renaturalization” of this property and “complemented with other existing projects and complemented with the recovery of the heart of Doñana.”
The spokesperson for the parliamentary group For Andalusia, Inmaculada Nieto, has considered that the announcement made by the president of the Board, Juanma Moreno, of the purchase of a farm in the area of ??Doñana to “improve the situation of the natural and national park” is that of “a denier with a bad conscience.”
In a note on her account on the social network ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter, Inmaculada Nieto, the spokesperson for Por Andalucía, has maintained that the one made by Moreno is “the announcement of a denier with a bad conscience”, and has opined that “The only thing that will make it credible” that the Andalusian president and the PP-A “has returned to good sense and sanity is for him to withdraw his irrigation bill”, in reference to the initiative registered by PP-A and Vox and that It is currently being processed in the Andalusian Parliament to regularize irrigable areas in the Condado de Huelva region, in the area of ??Doñana.
For his part, the general coordinator of IU Andalucía and national deputy of Sumar, Toni Valero, has spoken along the same lines, who in statements sent to the media has considered that, with the initiative announced this Tuesday, Juanma Moreno “intends wash away his denialist image that he has earned with the facts.
Valero has opined that the president of the Board knows “that he has lost all credibility” with the PP-A and Vox bill “to legalize irrigation in Doñana, or recently” with his “furious attack” on the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) in response to the warning level that it activated at the beginning of this month due to the passage of an Isolated Depression at High Levels (DANA) of the atmosphere over the Iberian Peninsula, which “caused so much damage in some parts of our country.”
In this way, Valero has stressed that Moreno’s announcement “is nothing more than a smokescreen” with which the president of the Board “intends to improve his image”, and the purchase of the aforementioned property “does not change anything.” At the same time, he has stressed that the bill “to legalize irrigation in Doñana is as unacceptable and harmful as before”, and the Board’s initiative “does not change anything about the dramatic situation of the aquifer and the loss of biodiversity in Doñana, fruit precisely of the disappearance of the gaps due to their inaction,” he added.
The IU leader has regretted the “obstinacy” of Moreno, who “seems obsessed with a bill that both the scientific community and the rest of the administrations have already warned him is contrary to the law, and that it is lethal for the Park.” National of Doñana”, and has asserted that “there is only one possible way out”, which is “the withdrawal” of the aforementioned parliamentary initiative, after which he concluded by ruling that as long as the president of the Board “does not rectify and leave the law of irrigation in a box, will not deserve any credibility.
