The fine white sand beaches of the south of Menorca and the lunar landscapes of Faváritx, in the geological area known as Fosca Menorca, are two of the areas of the island most affected by a singular erosion that is not related to change. climate. It is another of the silent impacts of tourist overcrowding, which takes shape in the plundering of significant quantities of geological material that tourists try to take to their countries of origin as a personalized souvenir.
Much of this material is retained at airport security controls. Every year the Consell de Menorca puts figures on this looting, which takes the form of stones, sand, shells and other fossil elements.
This past summer season, 1,083 kilos of geological material were confiscated at the airport and since 2015, the first year in which there are records, the figure has risen to more than 14 tons of confiscated material.
This is a practice that may seem harmless, but it causes significant damage to the geological heritage of Menorca if the thousands of thefts that take place each year are taken into account.
This material is a small part of everything that it is estimated that tourists can take, but no matter how minimal it may be, the recovery of this material at the Maó airport allows it to have a second life thanks to an agreement between , the Consell de Menorca and the Mestral association.
Marta Carreras, Medi Ambient technician at the Consell de Menorca, explains that the Mestral association is responsible for collecting everything that is confiscated at the airport and returns the geological material to the Consell. In the month of November, once the tourist season has ended, it is collected and classified according to the type of material and the geological areas that exist on the island and then returned to the area from which they were extracted.
To do this, the interpretive guidelines of the Geology Center, attached to the Medi Ambient department of the Consell, are followed, which differentiates five landscape units on the island according to their geological characteristics, popularly ordered according to the color of the rocks: the dark Menorca, the red , the gray, the white and the yellow.
The sands, pebbles and other rocks collected at the airport passenger control are returned to the environment based on these units which, apart from color, have other geological features in common. In this way, it is possible to integrate the geological material into its natural environment.
Carreras explains that the geological souvenirs preferred by tourists, due to their uniqueness and beauty, are the fine sands in the south of the island, in white Menorca, and the black and red stones in the north, from the lunar landscapes of Faváritx and other points of the island.
The Consell's recovery work helps keep these areas in good condition, but Carreras recognizes that it is only the tip of the iceberg of a much larger problem. “Not everything that is extracted from the island is detected at the airport, and we also do not know what goes in the holds of the planes or ships,” this technique acknowledges. He also points out that the Menorcans themselves do it without being aware of the damage it causes.
Carreras considers it essential that citizens understand the impact of the massive theft of this geological material because it can involve a large-scale modification of the terrain.
He points out that tourists take a stone or a bit of sand thinking it is a harmless action, but when this extraction is multiplied by the thousands of visitors to the island, it becomes a full-blown plunder. Menorca received 1.7 million travelers in 2022 for an island that has just reached 100,000 inhabitants.
Would it be appropriate to put up posters in the main tourist areas or even at the airport so that tourists become aware and do not carry out this silent plunder? It could be an option. Carreras believes that campaigns could be carried out in this sense and points out that this citizen awareness has helped other actions that are harmful to the environment to practically disappear, such as mud baths in some areas of the island, which became fashionable a few years ago. .
“One of the geologists who has helped in this program previously remembers that he saw tourists taking clay from some parts of the island after taking a mud bath,” he says. He points out that, fortunately, these practices have now gone out of fashion because they had a great effect in areas of the island such as Cavallería, where dozens of people gathered to smear themselves with the mud from the cliffs due to its supposed beneficial effects.
These baths eroded the cliffs and caused a loss of more than a ton of clay that is not renewed, and the erosion of the terrain also causes rockfall. On the other hand, health authorities assure that there are no scientific studies that support benefits for the skin and it can cause infections if the mud is in stagnant water.
Another fashion that had consequences in the transformation of the natural environment has also been overcome: stacking stones and boulders as towers in the natural areas of the Balearic Islands. Carreras points out that campaigns were carried out to get people to stop doing it, and now it has practically disappeared.
The work of classifying and returning these materials to their geological areas of origin is done in collaboration with Mestral, a social entity that is in charge of collecting stones, sand and fossils. The students of one of the training itineraries of the Cáritas job placement program are in charge of this and they are the ones who do the classification with a prior training workshop given by Agustí Rodríguez, geologist and director of the Geology Center of Menorca.
Guillem Velázquez, plant manager of this association's warehouse in Maó, explains the details of the project and points out that one of the pillars of the workshops is environmental training. Mestral takes care of everything that is retained at airport security checkpoints, not just the ecological material. Without going any further, for example, this summer they have collected more than 300 kilos of sun creams that they classify and resell. Other items confiscated are umbrellas and sharp materials, such as razors or knives.
