Drought, overexploitation send key Spanish lagoon to its doom
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Scientists attribute the lagoon's loss to a lengthy drought mixed with aquifer overexploitation for farming and tourism.
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Dry marshland visible in Donana natural park in southwest Spain on October 19, 2022 (AP)
For another consecutive summer, the largest lagoon in drought-stricken southern Spain's Donana national park, home to one of Europe's largest wetlands, has totally dried out.
Cracked white soil has replaced the once waters of the Santa Olalla lagoon, which normally support a plethora of aquatic life and massive colonies of migrating birds.
Water resources to Donana, whose marshes, woodlands, and dunes cover almost 130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) in the Andalusian provinces of Huelva, Seville, and Cádiz, have been dramatically reduced over the last 30 years due to climate change, farming, mining pollution, and marsh drainage.
Scientists attribute the lagoon's loss to a lengthy drought mixed with aquifer overexploitation for farming and tourism.
Last August, Spanish officials restricted water use in Andalusia, when reservoirs were at 25% of their maximum capacity.
A study published at the time by Nature Geoscience detailed that parts of Spain are the dryest in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system caused by climate change.
Carmen Diaz Paniagua, a researcher at the Donana Biological Station, explained to AFP that the climate is not "rare" for a Mediterranean one, however, she added that the real issues lie in the "mismanagement of the aquifers" and the illegal wells that make it hard to track how much water is being used.
The majority of the lagoons in the reserve are transitory, filling with precipitation in the winter and drying up in the summer, but a handful hold water all year, offering an essential sanctuary for animal life.
The Donana national park is bordered by a sea of greenhouses, and the Matalascanas vacation town is less than a kilometer from the reserve's northernmost lagoons.
Read more: Spanish Stonehenge reappears as drought hits Spain
"This is not a natural thing happening only because of climate change. It can be reversed, if we can reduce the water extractions the lagoon could resist," Diaz Paniagua added.
The conservative regional government of Andalusia, which includes Donana, is attempting to expand irrigation rights near the park, ignoring warnings from UNESCO and the European Commission.
A new bill presently being debated in the regional legislature would legalize hundreds of hectares of berry farming that is currently watered by illegal wells.
Defenders of the initiative believe that it will help individuals who were unfairly excluded from a prior regularisation of farms in the region implemented by a Socialist administration in 2014.
"The water management policy is really not conducive to the conservation of Donana's lagoons," Diaz Paniagua stated.
The worst #drought in 500 years is hitting #Europe. Would this dangerous warning be enough for governments to act before it's too late?#ClimateCrisis pic.twitter.com/PTMTvWOUff
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) August 28, 2022
