A Canary Islands environmentalist group has warned that visitors are harming Tenerife’s Teide National Park by straying off-trail and climbing over the protected terrain.
The Unesco Heritage site of Teide National Park features the Teide-Pico Viejo stratovolcano that, at 3,718m, is the highest peak in Spanish territory, making for a spectacular view of its volcanic landscape and towering height.
Tourists to Tenerife, a popular holiday destination, will often visit this giant natural landmark, home to flora and fauna and small creatures like the Tenerife lizard, that are unique to the area.
Tenerife’s tourist board says that the Teide National Park is the most visited national park in Europe, welcoming some three million visitors a year.
However, Telesforo Bravo–Juan Coello Foundation, a Canarian environmentalist and scientific group, has criticised the island’s council for what they believe to be an “unsustainable” management of the park.
Writing in a social media post on Sunday, 13 April, Jaime Coello Bravo, the director of the Telesforo Bravo–Juan Coello Foundation said that Teide National Park “hurts”.
Mr Bravo called out the Cabildo de Tenerife (Tenerife Island Council) for continuing “to allow and promote the massification and destruction of what they themselves call, ‘the crown jewel of the protected natural spaces of Tenerife’.”
“If this is the crown jewel. How will the other spaces be? We know because most are equal or worse,” he continued.
“It is a scandal and a shame the lack of response, inaction and complicity with an unsustainable situation.”
Mr Bravo also posted pictures and videos of a car park of visitors, people seen climbing up the volcanic rock formations and taking pictures, and a woman appearing to pick up stones.
“In the pictures, you can appreciate how the Minas de San José were the other day,” he said. “The overcrowding of vehicles is indescribable.”
“People getting in off-path and climbing everywhere, too. In addition, we can see people selecting rocks and taking them off-path in another area of the Park, in front of [Mount] Guajara.”
The environmentalist’s criticism comes days after the Cabildo de Tenerife announced an online reservation system for certain, more advanced trails around the national park.
The council opened access on foot to the trails leading to the peak of Teide National Park for mountain federations and authorised tourism professionals and companies that must meet a series of requirements such as a permit and certain equipment.
Access will be permitted to those registered in the Canary Islands Government’s Tourism Registry under the headings of hiking, mountaineering, and/or trekking activities, with accredited guides with the necessary qualifications.
The online reservation system has been set up “in order to preserve the natural environment and control the influx of people.”
The Independent has contacted Telesforo Bravo–Juan Coello Foundation and Cabildo de Tenerife for comment.
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