• Monday, April 18, the creeks national park celebrates its tenth anniversary.

    An anniversary that rhymes with success, but which also poses a problem of overcrowding.

  • The director of the Calanques National Park François Bland returns for "20 Minutes" to this past decade and the challenges to be met.

  • The Calanque de Sugiton, “whose surface access to the sea is very small and reasonably estimated at 200 to 250 places”, receives an average of 2,000 people per day, which creates soil erosion.

    Hence the idea of ​​establishing quotas.

A whole decade.

Monday, April 18, the Calanques National Park celebrates its tenth anniversary.

An anniversary that rhymes with success, as the number of visitors to this park at the gates of Marseille is exponential... and also poses a problem.

Ten years after its creation, the park is experimenting this summer, for the first time in France, with the establishment of quotas, in a calanque threatened by overcrowding, the Calanque de Sugiton.

The director of the Calanques National Park François Bland returns for

20 Minutes

to this past decade and the challenges to be met.

What is your assessment of the establishment of a National Park in the creeks, ten years after its creation?

Nature is doing better.

We have good results in terms of biodiversity.

For example, at sea, the establishment of no-take zones has caused fish populations to quadruple in six years.

We have a very rapid evolution which concerns all the species.

If we take this flagship species that is the grouper, we are on populations that have increased very strongly.

Very soon, there will be as much, and perhaps more grouper in the creeks than in Port-Cros.

This is a sign that the marine environment is doing better, because the grouper is a species at the top of the trophic scale.

When the grouper goes, everything goes!

What are the points for improvement?

There are still actions to be taken.

The question of the high attendance of the park constitutes a strong pressure on the natural environment.

The terrestrial natural park welcomes a very large public.

We are seeing an increase in attendance linked to the context of the health crisis.

There is a keen interest of the population to go more towards nature.

2021 has been the busiest year since the creation of the national park.

We therefore have to carry out management work when the number of visitors is intense.

Precisely, this summer, you will experience, and this is a first in France, the establishment of quotas in the creek of Sugiton.

Why this cove in particular?

Sugiton is a pearl of the creeks, a destination dear to the people of Marseille and which receives many visits from all ages.

But she is in danger.

This site has a level of attendance of around 2,000 people per day, which is extremely high.

It is not the busiest: in Sormiou, for example, there are between 3,000 and 4,000 people.

On the other hand, Sugiton is actually a very small creek.

The access area to the sea is very small and reasonably estimated at 200 to 250 places.

It is also located in a configuration with a steep slope.

And so, when there are high levels of attendance, people move everywhere.

We are witnessing a destruction of vegetation, therefore a disappearance of species that are present on the coast, and soil erosion which is very significant.

The floors have shrunk by almost twenty centimeters!

We see completely bare trees.

We are in a dynamic which means that we have a regression of the living.

And we are heading towards a creek which will be much more mineral.

This space is gradually and irremediably transformed.

We had undertaken certain things, in particular on the access paths to channel.

But when you have 2,000 people...

So then what do we do?

Either we let it happen and we have a somewhat irreversible degradation of the site.

Either we completely ban during periods of very high attendance.

Or, indeed, there is an intermediate measure.

This is the measure that is being implemented on an experimental basis and which relies on the responsibility of visitors.

How will this work?

The observation is that in Sugiton, we cannot all go there at the same time.

So, on the site, we fixed that it could not receive more than 400 people in a reasonable way for the environment.

There is a capacity of around 300 people and a flow of visitors.

This is already dividing by five the level of high attendance.

Access will remain free.

On the other hand, you will have to reserve your visit permit on a digital platform: on the park's website or on the park's application.

And everyone can book either four days before, or two days before the evening.

We have the release of places which will be done in two stages.

And everyone will be able to reserve up to five visit permits.

It is a one-day permit, that is, 24 hours.

We have delimited an area that requires a visit permit, at the bottom of the creeks.

And at the entrance gates of this demarcated area, there will be two checkpoints.

The visitor who will have his visit permit, which will be nominative, must present a QR code.

And if there are four people, there will be four different QR codes.

The measure will be implemented on June 26 and July 3, then daily from July 10 to August 21.

We will then return to the experiment in December.

The thousand people who went to Sugiton are going to go elsewhere… How to do it?

In all the actions that the park conducts, we will work on the reception offers for the public.

There is a desire to go to the coast, the beach.

We must therefore be able to offer sites elsewhere.

These are subjects under discussion with the communities.

Immediately people can go to other creeks, but some will decide to go to La Ciotat or the Gorges du Verdon.

In the other creeks, we also have situations with a lot of people but where the environment can support a little more high levels of attendance.

Will this logic of quotas be extended to other creeks?

The experiment will be successful if we arrive at this awareness of the public which consists in saying that making the effort not to go to the site that we wanted to frequent is a contribution to the protection of nature.

If it works well, it is obviously devices that we could take inspiration from in other sites, in the creeks or elsewhere.

But we don't have any immediate plans.

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  • creeks

  • Quotas

  • Tourism

  • Park

  • Marseilles

  • Paca