Still waiting for an agreement for the Autonomous Community of Castile-La Mancha to take over the management of the Tablas de Daimiel National Park and with its permanent instability due to lack of water, a new problem is added to this unique natural space. A study prepared by an organization dependent on the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) discovered that in addition to the water deficit, the little water that is there is of very poor quality and is contaminated, even dangerous to health, due to the high presence of pesticides, some of which have been banned by the European Union for years.
The investigation, conducted by the Institute for Environmental Diagnosis and Water Studies (Idaea)aimed to assess the impact of agricultural activities in two national parks with wetlands, such as Doñana and Las Tablas de Daimiel. In the latter case, as explained to ABC Ethel EljarratOne of the members of the research team collected water and sediment samples at 20 points around this natural area.
The analyses of this study, funded by the Autonomous Organization of National Parks (OAPN)began to be carried out three years ago, more precisely in May 2021. There, the researcher emphasizes, they found hydrophilic pesticides, that is, those that remain dissolved in water, and also hydrophobic pesticides, which, due to their physicochemical properties, have a greater capacity to be retained in sediments.
“Although one would expect to find pesticides, in some samples obtained from the Tablas de Daimiel National Park there was a very high presence of pyrethroid insecticides – which are applied to crops, garden plants or domestic animals -, in which two of them predominated: fenvalerate and permethrin,” reports Eljarrat. The last of them, as he points out, “is a pesticide whose agricultural use is prohibited by the European Union (EU) since 2009″.
The fact that permethrin was found there, he says, “may be due to its presence in the water not for agricultural use, but for other uses, or to the fact that it continues to be used fraudulently.” However, the case of this illegal insecticide is not the only one that has been found in the Daimiel Tables, since the samples Traces of oxadiazon and cyfluthrin have appeared, pesticides authorized in 2021but when they made the 2022 sample they were already banned by the EU.
Asked about this, the OAPN stated that, being located at the end of the upper basin of the Guadiana River, “all the pollution problems that occur there end up reaching the national park.” Thus, as they explain to ABC, “the sediments of the Tablas de Daimiel constitute a sink for the pollutants of the basin.”
In fact, in the Master Plan for the Use and Management of Las Tablas de Daimiel National Parkapproved in Decree 87/2017 of December 5, there is a section with direct references to this problem inviting the development of restoration actions: “Based on existing scientific studies, restoration and correction projects for the contamination of existing sediments and the clogging process where measures such as mechanical stripping of sediments and their removal from the wetland can be considered, as well as others that can be defined to improve the biocenosis of the national park.
Thus, and within the framework of the OAPN, as the management administration of the national park (within a Joint Management Commission with the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha), the following actions were carried out: firstly, the construction of the preventive device for polluting floods of the Gigüela River at its entrance to the Tablas de Daimiel, as a green filter to improve the quality of the flows (2012). And, on the other hand, a specific action to eliminate contaminated sediments on the Pan Island route, which, according to them, has brought a “remarkable environmental improvement”.
Although these actions are local and implemented within the management area of the OAPN, and within the Tablas de Daimiel National Parkconsider that “the fight against this pollution requires a global action in the hydrographic basin, aspects that must be addressed within the framework of the hydrological plan of the basin of the hydrographic demarcation of the Guadiana”.
In this sense, the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, in collaboration with the Community Council of Castilla-La Manchahas created a high-level working group to prepare a framework of priority actions for the recovery of the Tablas de Daimiel National Park. This would also be accompanied by a set of measures that comprehensively address the problems of this wetland, including those already implemented to combat aquatic contamination by pesticides.
In any case, in the opinion of the Idaea-CSIC researcher, it would be good to continue carrying out controls and monitoring similar to what they did with their study to see if the regulations are being complied with today or if, on the contrary, farmers continue to use these pesticides illegally. Chemical substances that, according to Eljarrat, “pollute the water and put aquatic organisms in a situation of high risk and, therefore, endanger the flora and fauna of the park.”
