The cry of Doñana, a thirsty wetland

The SUV leaves the entrance control behind and enters bouncing along the track in one of the restricted areas of the Doñana National Park (Huelva and Seville), escorted by pines, junipers, heather.

"It's dry, very dry, drier than ever," says Eloy Revilla, researcher and director of the Doñana Biological Station, the origin of this protected area, behind the wheel of the vehicle.

Even the most resistant vegetation suffers the ravages of the lack of precipitation.

It is mid-October, and in the distance you can see an empty plain, with a bed cracked by dryness: the permanent lagoon of Santa Olalla (it should have water all year round), or what remains of it.

Its desolation symbolizes the mistreatment of the wetlands of the Doñana National Park, one of the most important in Europe,

which has suffered for decades extractions to give drink to the intensive agriculture of red fruits and tourism.

With the natural regime completely disturbed, the endless drought has given the finishing touch to the natural space.

From one of the edges of Santa Olalla —it has come to cover 45 hectares— a small stream flows that disappears towards the center of the lagoon staining the land a darker brown.

The channel has appeared several weeks after the departure of the vacationers from Matalascañas at the end of August, which allows the aquifer to rise in level in that area and emerge.

The macro-urbanization, which receives some 150,000 visitors during the summer, adjoins the protected area and is nourished by the groundwater that should be feeding this lagoon and the Dulce, the only permanent ones in the 54,252 hectares of the national park, in addition to the temporary ones.

The park is surrounded by other territories with a lower level of protection (natural park) that make up the Doñana natural area in the provinces of Huelva, Seville and Cádiz.

A group of flamingos was flying over the dry lagoon of Santa Olalla where a cow was resting.

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"This is just a small relief that does not solve the problem," adds Revilla, contemplating the spring, while pulling up a small stem of tamarisk, one of the plant species that ends up colonizing the lagoons when they are not flooded for several seasons.

An increasingly common scenario.

At the bottom of Santa Olalla, a group of 15 solitary flamingos take flight, with no other company than a cow lying placidly in full sun on the dry land.

It is difficult to imagine the autumnal reality in which the lagoon should be immersed: a magnificent spectacle of wading birds pecking at the mud in search of small invertebrates.

As the season progresses, thousands of ducks, geese, geese arrive... from northern Europe, also to the marshes, a wetland of extraordinary importance, to the east of the national park, along the banks of the Guadalquivir.

They are usually flooded in autumn with the rains because their soil is impermeable, unlike the sandy one in the lagoons, which filters the water and needs the level of the aquifer to rise to fill up.

At the beginning of spring or summer they dry up and become the territory of horses, cows,

Eloy Revilla, director of the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC) in the Santa Olalla lagoon. PACO PUENTES

The last waterfowl monitoring report from the Biological Station of July 2022 concludes that their number was the lowest in the last 40 years, due to the "very serious lack of rain this winter [that of 2021]".

Barely 87,500 individuals were registered, far from the slightly more than 470,000 of the previous year.

The drama of the lack of water in Santa Olalla is repeated in the lagoons that dot the sandbanks of the park.

60% of the almost 3,000 documented have disappeared.

"Before, some years yes and others were not flooded, because the climate is Mediterranean and precipitation is very variable, but what is not normal is that we have been like this for decades and we are also losing it," explains Revilla.

This hydrological year, which ended in August, the Doñana Biological Reserve recorded 282.5 liters of water per square meter, while the average for the last 10 years was 445 litres.

And in July the temperature record was broken with 46.3 degrees, six more than the average for that month since 1978, when records began.

"Aren't they desperate?"

"There are times when it's hard to get out of bed, and nobody says they didn't know about the situation," Revilla replies.

The dry lagoon of Santa Olalla in Doñana, seen from a drone.Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station; EBD-CSIC)

Waterless mouth of the Soto Chico stream in the national park.Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station

Vegetation that grows in the Zahillo lagoon due to lack of water.Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station; EBD-CSIC)

The dry bed of the Soto Chico stream shows the state of the Doñana marshes. Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station

Cattle fencing in Vera Grande on the edge of the El Rocío marsh. Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station

Pasture in the humid areas of the Dulce lagoon, which remains empty this year.Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station

Detail of the cracked floor of the Santa Olalla lagoon.Ricardo Díaz-Delgado (Doñana Biological Station; EBD-CSIC)

Their obligation, as members of the Doñana Biological Station, dependent on the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), is "to continue investigating and telling society about it," he says.

And he hopes that "finally" the administrations agree and coordinate to apply a solution.

“Capable they are, another thing is that they are aware of the need and the urgency that exists.

We've been saying it for 30 years."

The speed at which changes are taking place is frightening.

"It's not the drought," says Carmen Díaz, a researcher at the Doñana Biological Station for 40 years, making her way through trees and bushes that block the path to the search for the Brecillo lagoon, one of those that only live in memory.

"Do you think this is a lagoon?", She asks, pointing to the junipers, the jaguarzos, the heathers or the pines that invade the former wetland, which do not reveal any clue of what the Brecillo was and ceased to be. .

In the process of losing these aquatic ecosystems, the meadow first appears, then the rushes and, finally, the terrestrial vegetation.

Carmen Díaz, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC), in the national park.

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“This change does not happen in a couple of years, because the system is used to the unpredictability of the rains of the Mediterranean environment.

The problem here is that the aquifer does not have time to recover to overcome the dry periods”, he clarifies.

He gives the toads as an example of adaptation to the area, "which raise you in October as well as in January", depending on the rains.

What they can't stand is several years without reproducing.

The great wealth of Doñana is the variety of the network of ponds and lagoons between which a flow of species moves, key to maintaining the biodiversity of its aquatic ecosystems.

In Doñana live 11 of the 13 species of amphibians in western Andalusia, turtles, turtles, dragonflies and a large number of invertebrates and aquatic plants.

"Is the wetland saved?"

—The situation in Doñana is unbearable.

The radical change has happened in the last 10 years and it's going so fast that either we fix it now or it's dead,” he replies.

Two deer drank from an artificial hole dug so that cattle and wild animals have water. PACO PUENTES

On the way to the Zahillo lagoon, two deer involuntarily stage the bad moment in their habitat.

They observe the off-road vehicle without making any attempt to escape and without stopping digging in one of the zacallones, as the artificially dug holes near the lagoons are called so that the cattle and wild animals can drink, especially in summer.

There are no waterfowl in the park due to the scarcity of water, but deer and wild boar are a constant.

Under a cork oak, fifty deer observe the vehicle from which Juan Pedro Castellano, director of the Doñana National Park, enumerates the circumstances that, in his opinion, have led to the current situation: climatic variability, two very dry years and change climate.

"This is a beauty, and we haven't prepared it," he jokes.

To complete the picture, an Iberian imperial eagle hovers near the car for a few minutes.

Castellano, unlike the scientists at the Biological Reserve, which is part of the national park, declares himself "reasonably optimistic" because measures have been taken to minimize the environmental impact for some time.

“1,000 hectares of crops were raised in La Rocina that are now a park;

7,000 hectares of eucalyptus trees have been removed, which consume a lot of water, and in 2015 the Los Mimbrales farm where it was grown was acquired, which saves 6.7 cubic hectometres of water”, he describes.

Juan Pedro Castellano, director of the Doñana National Park. PACO PUENTES

He is accompanied on the visit by Enrique Borrallo, general director of Protected Natural Areas of the Junta de Andalucía, who points to the transfer of 20 cubic hectometres of Tinto, Odiel and Piedras to the Guadalquivir basin approved in 2018 as the solution to avoid extractions of the aquifer.

“It is the Government that has to finish the infrastructures, we offer our support”, he raises passing the hot potato to the State.

On October 13, the Ministry for the Ecological Transition began studies to complete the transfer, from which they are currently receiving only five cubic hectometres for supply and agriculture.

The climate of optimism evaporates with Felipe Fuentelsaz, WWF Agriculture Coordinator.

He shows the other reality of the environment, the wells that dot the territory outside the fence of the protected area, which feed the orchards of blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, such as one located in the Moriana stream that is easily accessed.

This particular construction "does not have rights, but it is preparing its regularization", they report from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation (CHG).

Fuentelsaz assures that they are going to oppose the legitimization of the infrastructure because it is located in a stream considered an ecological corridor by the forest crown plan.

The brick construction captures surface water by stealing it from the stream, which connects with other courses that flowed directly into the marshes.

An artesian well in the Moriana stream without an extraction permit. PACO PUENTES

"NO+HARASSMENT", shouts a graffiti when reaching ground zero, between Lucena del Puerto and Moguer, the most conflictive due to the growth of illegal crops, and at the same time for being the headwaters of the La Rocina stream, the main one that pours Doñana.

Fuentelsaz knows that he is not welcome in these and other places, after 20 years of pursuing farms, rafts, surveys... in use but without authorization.

"There is even a WhatsApp group that warns of the presence of environmentalists, river agents and even journalists," he says.

According to his estimates, there are 1,000 illegal captures, while the CHG reduces them to between 200 and 375, an estimate based on the area detected by satellite.

Further on, a large pool of water comes out of the Cañada stream, as if it were a natural entrance to the riverbed itself.

But it is artificial.

Seprona closed it in 2020. "And now what?" asks Fuentelsaz, "because you have done great damage to the stream, you have put an excavator, and there it remains, like so many others, without restoring it."

On the sides of the road, abandoned farms can be seen, with shreds of plastic hanging.

—After so many years of fighting, how do you feel?

—Disappointed, tired.

The problem is that we get small wins and big losses.

In Doñana a victory is never fully celebrated.

Workers in the strawberry plantations in Lucena del Puerto (Huelva).

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The current legal irrigation surface, with data from the CHG, is 18,592 hectares in the Almonte, Marismas and La Rocina water masses.

The latter is where the greatest infractions are located: 776 illegal hectares.

In 2014, an amnesty was approved for producers without an irrigation permit with a plan that ordered the areas with crops in the north of the Doñana forest crown, known as the strawberry plan.

At that time, 50% of cultivated hectares were legal and the rest were not.

After the regularizations, 10% remained outside the law in the Guadalquivir basin.

“It was a social pact and one of the administrations that was of great help to us, because until that moment we did not know who could be regularized and who could not,” explains Alejandro González, CHG water commissioner.

In the last turn of the thread, the PP of Juan Manuel Moreno and Vox presented two bills to legitimize orchards that they consider have demonstrable irrigation rights, which were not taken into account in the 2014 plan. A proposal that has provoked the rejection of environmental associations and has broken the traditional union of farmers.

The Puerta de Doñana Farmers Association, from Almonte, does not support the initiative.

They consider that the hectares irrigated without permission constitute an illegality "permitted by the administrations" and point out: "We are not opposed to legalizing more surface, but not with the water that exists."

Meanwhile, the County Irrigation Platform maintains that it is necessary to recognize the historical rights of the owners of 800 hectares,

Felipe Fuentelsaz, WWF Agriculture Coordinator, on an illegal raft closed by Seprona. PACO PUENTES

WWF recalls that Spain is subject to the judgment of the European Court of Justice of the European Union of 2021, which concludes that the "excessive extraction of groundwater" in Doñana does not comply with the Water and Habitats framework directives.

As a consequence, measures must be taken to preserve the protected space from overexploitation.

Legitimizing more hectares of irrigated land does not seem to them the best way to prevent further damage to the Doñana aquifer and to the special protection area for birds (ZEPA).

Back in the national park, at elevation 32, the highest, the dry landscape changes and the lack of water fades to the profane eye.

The morning mist clings to dawn, undulating between the tops of the pines, junipers... hiding the nearby Atlantic beaches, but without the strength to disguise the buildings of Matalascañas, which seem creaky and immovable.

“

!, a deer”, warns Jaime Robles, fourth generation of a family of rangers of the Doñana Biological Reserve, seed of the national park, which was created with the 6,800 hectares of marshes that the environmental organization WWF bought in 1963 and gave to the Condition.

Six years later, on October 16, 1969, the Doñana National Park was founded, a figure that fortified the space with fences and impediments to entry, but that did not stop new threats under the protection of development and despite warnings from conservationists.

That same year, a few months before, Matalascañas was declared of national tourist interest.

And in 1971 the circle that will lead to the current conflicts is closed, when the colonization of certain irrigable areas with groundwater is also considered of national interest.

Jaime Robles Caro, watchman of the Doñana Biological Reserve, observed the Santa Olalla lagoon.

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"Here you work more with your ears than with your eyes," says Robles, only to notice later on the white bed of fine sand, fox, hare, and lizard tracks... Everything under control, even the poachers, each time less frequent, although they still sneak in for pineapples, very well paid.

"It smells of wild boar, deer, dry grass...", he sniffs, while driving along the "summer highway", two deep open ruts in the middle of the dry marsh covered with heather, construction material of the old huts in which it was also used. rush.

It is the area of ​​La Vera, a narrow strip of transition between the marsh and the preserves and dunes.

In its ancient cork oaks, remnants of ancient forests, herons, egrets and herons breed in spring.

They are the famous aviaries of Doñana.

Alfonso Luis Ramírez, CSIC technician,

he approaches one of the cork oaks, from which hang some black cubes.

She checks the foliar condition of the trees, "which is declining in general."

Robles learned from the best teachers: "Our parents and old companions, the wise men of the field."

Son of one of the guards known as historical, he lived the first 27 years of his life in the preserve.

He and the rest of the kids, the children of other guards, would get into a Land Rover on the way to school in the morning, jumping puddles, happy (“you weren't bored,” he says).

That deep knowledge makes Jaime hurt by everything that happens to the reservation.

"Sometimes you are left with the anguish of not having done something, but you have no power of decision."

A water meter in the cracked ground of the Santa Olalla lagoon. PACO PUENTES

Over the years he has seen the park evolve into a place with less water.

“I have known the water lagoons to the top and dry up, of course they have dried up, years almost completely!, but not that much.

High temperatures, drought and climate change have come together here.”

Santa Olalla suffered the ravages of deep droughts in two other moments and lost water in 1983 and 1995, since there are records.

His father, also Jaime Robles, already retired, is waiting at the entrance fence to the Doñana Biological Reserve.

He entered guard duty in 1970 and retired in 2011. "A lifetime, I only missed the time of military service," he smiles.

And he has been “very happy”, despite not having electricity until Felipe González began spending his summers in Doñana.

“Before, we managed with a carbide at night, and the refrigerators were butane”, he recalls.

But "what is past is past", and back to the present he only sees that "unless measures are put in place, everything goes down the drain".

Remember that before there was almost no agriculture: "You couldn't imagine what they were going to set up."

He lives nearby, in Matalascañas, 300 meters from the national park, and he doesn't understand the reason for "those lots of swimming pools, if they have the beach next to them!".

In their time they were dedicated to the nursery, to attend visits, to control the poachers who caught every day and to hunt rabbits, geese..., everything that was not big game, which was reserved for "the gentlemen who came every day ”.

Although he has never been "very fond of the shotgun".

Jaime Robles Rodríguez, one of the historical guards of the Doñana reserve, in the national park. PACO PUENTES

At the exit of the reserve, Jaime Robles father merges in a hug with the scientist Rosa Ribas.

They haven't seen each other for years, since his retirement.

Ribas and her partner Isidro Ramón are researchers from the aquatic ecosystem monitoring team and are returning from the dune area, from “looking for traces of the spur-thighed tortoise”.

They have not been successful.

The turtles "should be activated by now, but they're waiting to see if it rains," he says.

One more clue as to how the scarcity of water affects the protected area, which is home to one of the only two populations of the spur-thighed tortoise in mainland Spain, a critically ill species.

In this situation, no one doubts that measures must be taken, not even the farmers, who demand the transfer to close the surveys.

The CHG informs that it has initiated a series of improvements, which focus above all on the control of withdrawals, with mathematical models and creating communities of users with the capacity to monitor the aquifer.

To minimize the impact on Matalascañas, they are going to move the boreholes closest to the lagoons in the short term.

Conservationists and scientists warn that time is running out.

"Doñana is the sentinel in the environmental situation in which we find ourselves, and we have to react because we are going to have problems, not only in a place as emblematic as this one that attracts attention."

Copernicus satellite images of Doñana made between 2017 and 2022 that show the evolution of the park and its lagoons.

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