Doñana is a unique landscape in Europe with more than 30,000 hectares of natural marsh, the Eden of migratory birds. “It is a fundamental site for the migration of six million birds that transit from northern Europe to Africa,” explains Felipe Fuentelsaz, WWF’s agriculture and water coordinator.

In Doñana they spend the winter and breed the birds, they have done so for centuries, but fewer and fewer nest. “We have been in the dry cycle for 12 years nowis the longest in the history of the National Park”, says Carlos Dávila, head of the technical office of Seobirdlife Doñana.

The wetland dries up, and not just because of the lack of rain. “It is, above all, for the overexploitation of aquifers. I’m afraid it’s some kind of tradition. The first complaint I remember was in 1987,” laments Miguel Ferrer, a research professor at the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station.

Those illegal wells have proliferated ever since. In the last five years about 1,200 have been sealed, but many others are still pending closure. “The result is an unprecedented loss of biodiversity. Doñana’s ecosystems are on the verge of collapse and the marsh remains dry for longer,” says Dávila.

The CSIC has verified that even the lagoons that a decade ago did not dry up in summer now dopartly because of those intensive crops that consume so much water.

The law proposed by the Junta de Andalucía now intends to add 800 new hectares of agricultural land. “We have created a irrigation bubble without having a natural resource […] They are trying to regularize a lot of illegal land in the area and with the law in hand we would have to eliminate it,” criticizes Fuentelsaz.

For this reason, the Salvemos Doñana Platform will demonstrate in Seville this Sunday. Law-abiding farmers don’t like the Board’s proposal either. “Distributing the little water that there is is foolhardy“, maintained Manuel Delgado, spokesman for the Puerta de Doñana Farmers Association, in the Sixth Column.

The future of the National Park is at stake. 38 scientists and institutions have asked UNESCO to declare Doñana a World Heritage Site in danger.