Making Nature Pay For Itself

Here's a question for you, and you have to be honest when answering. I won't accept any economies with the truth that suggest you have been more natural-world correct than you really are. The question is - have you ever visited a nature park or another nature finca on Mallorca? To help you answer, these include the likes of Albufera, Llevant and Mondragó parks as well as fincas such as Son Real near Can Picafort.

If you have answered yes, then you can feel duly righteous. You can also count yourself among the very few who actually have visited any. I'm going to be extraordinarily righteous and say that, for example, I have visited Albufera many times, but then again, I live right opposite it. I do wonder, though, how many other local residents ever venture inside its vastness. When something's there, you tend to rather ignore it.

The lack of interest shown in the island's natural world is such that barely 1% of the island's population stepped inside the Llevant nature park in 2011. It received in total under 20,000 visitors in all. And tourists weren't much better than the locals; they comprised roughly a half of these visitors, of which I would guess that a not insignificant number were schoolchildren (if excursions by schools to the Llevant park are as obvious as those to Albufera).

This is a pathetic number of people. In fact, it is a complete joke, given the amount of money that is spent on looking after the various parks and fincas. 10 million euros annually, says the Balearics environment ministry. Biel Company, the minister, who appears to be the only minister to have ever realised that no one much goes to these parks, has announced a plan to improve matters. There will be a "modern" website to publicise them (presumably, previous ones have been ancient) and the private sector - them again - will be invited to participate, shops can be opened and the parks can be hired for cultural events.

The minister intends to make the parks self-sufficient and therefore self-financing. It's a pretty tall order, and how do you actually put a price on nature? The parks, such as Albufera, are there primarily as an environmental, ecological and natural-world benefit and are indeed protected lands. Making money out of them has surely to be secondary.

Nevertheless, Company is probably right to give it a go. He may well have been delving into some of the records and discovering the sort of finance that has gone towards all this nature, some of it of decidedly questionable value. Son Real is a prime example. Four million euros spent on a visitor's centre and on restoring old cottages on the finca, and what have you got? No one seems to know who's running the place, and when the funding was handed over, I made a calculation that it would take 30 years to be paid back. And why? Because no one goes there, or no one in sufficient numbers, despite what they have hoped for.

The sad fact of the matter is that, apart from an apparent lack of interest among the local population, the parks don't attract anything like the number of tourists that the good words and wishes in respect of environmental and nature-world tourism would have anyone believe. It may be true that they tend not to be well-promoted - hotels in Can Picafort, for instance, have been criticised for not doing more to push Son Real - but then hotels like to make commissions on excursions, and there wouldn't be any from a shortish walk along the coast to the finca, and would anyone go anyway? In the height of summer, the last thing most tourists would want to be doing is schlepping around vast acres of a finca, building up an intolerable sweat. Just as tourists would avoid Son Real in summer, so they would Albufera and the other parks. It's too hot.

Ah but, there are the cooler months. Yes, there are, but where are the visitors? A "modern" website might help, but you really wouldn't put money on the number of tourists increasing dramatically. Hence, the money has to come from the good old private sector. But what are these cultural events that it would be staging when hiring the parks? Here's an idea, get New Order to play a gig in a nature park instead of or as well as Mallorca Rocks. It might make a few thousand birds clear off and require a bit of clearing up afterwards, but the relevant park would be quids in for the year or for several years.

I've got another idea. In South Africa's Kruger National Park, there are webcams at watering-holes. They make a mint from advertising. There isn't the wildlife in Mallorca's parks like there is in South Africa, but put a selection of webcams in choice positions, and you never know. Is this modern enough for a "modern" website?


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.