Legambiente Calabria has been asking the mayors of coastal municipalities for several years protect the beauty of coastal ecosystems and not to use mechanical means to clean the beaches. And although these warnings are now known and also prescribed by the Region, bulldozers systematically appear, bulldozers and crawlers that cause serious damage to dune systems and to the species and habitats at risk, which are found along the Calabrian coasts.
This year too Legambiente considered it important provision of the Territory and Environmental Protection Department of the Calabria Region, which with note no. 348263 of 05.24.2024 addressed to all coastal municipalities, has reiterated the bans on the use of mechanical means for cleaning the beachtransit on the coast of off-road vehicles or other wheeled earthworks and leveling vehicles that can alter the contour of the dunes and imposing the related economic sanctions against the defaulting municipalities.
But this is evidently still not enough to guarantee the protection of coastal habitats that it entails concrete actions in particular for the protection of the Caretta caretta turtle – the only sea turtle to nest in Italy – for whose conservation the green swan association is stipulating memoranda of understanding as part of the Life Turtlenest project that Legambiente is implementing throughout the national territory.
And again, for the protection of the Charadrius alexandrinus (Prat), nesting on the coasts of Calabria and of the psammophilous plant communities and typical species such as the sea lily and the ephedra.
“The reality of Calabrian municipalities and administrators is, as often happens, patchy – he claims Anna Parrettapresident of Legambiente Calabria – there are virtuous examples such as Palizzi (RC), where the administration is protecting habitats and protected species, but at the same time there are too many municipal administrations that continue to encourage the devastation of the beaches by carrying out cleaning with mechanical means”.
“Indeed, from a recent survey carried out by the regional department for territory and environmental protection, it emerged that around 50% of the coastal municipalities do not even have a beach plan to the point that the Calabria Region was forced to intervene”.
But therehe Calabrian beaches also suffer from other problems: on the Calabrian beaches there is too much waste, made up of over 80% of plastic and cigarette butts; many coastal areas are subjected to significant coastal erosion phenomena, which are destined to worsen in connection with the climate crisis.
And many suffer the negative effects of the persistent deficiencies of the purification systems as highlighted every year by the Legambiente Goletta Verde campaign as well as of illegal construction and, lastly, by the paradoxical choice by the Region to ignore EU rules and the rulings of the administrative judiciary on beach concessions.
“To the municipal administrations – concludes Parretta – we ask you to actively protect the beaches, the protected species and their habitats in the cleaning operations of the beaches, in the management of the waste cycle and in purification, concretely applying the existing legislation. We ask the Calabria Region to ensure the protection and safeguard of coastal ecosystems by carrying out rigorous checks on compliance with the rules and effectively guarantee the right to free use of the collective beach propertyraising the limit of free bathing to at least 60% of the beaches similarly to other regions”.
“A’solid and lasting tourist economy that brings real development to Calabria it can only be based on the defense of naturalistic beauty and on environmental and social sustainability criteria which must also be placed at the foundation of the comparative procedures for assigning beach concessions. Remembering above all that state property does not belong to “anyone” or even to “a few”: it belongs to all of us”.
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