Teide National Park

Teide National Park, proposed by Spain as a best practice, is interesting as a case study for the following aspects: management activities following environmental standards, local stakeholder participation, education and interpretation programme, apiculture, and controlling public use.

Summary provided by State Party

The landscape is one of the principle resources of the National Park and one of the main reasons it was added to the World Heritage List. In order to guarantee its conservation and renewal, following criteria that seek to maintain its natural features as much as possible, a programme has been developed based on the following points:

Strict protection of geological resources.

Protection of the plant covering:

• Given that the two principle factors that negatively affect the National Park are the presence of introduced herbivores and the impact of climate change, a programme to monitor the evolution of the ecosystem is carried out which focuses on quantifying the impact of these two factors. This control is carried out on two networks of permanent plots of sample land which span all of the habitats that exist in the National Park and the different ecotones between them. One of these networks is made of 500 x 500 m grids which are precisely mapped out based on the UTM grid WGS84, and the other is based on a local sample in which at each location three 10 x 10 m plots of land are established providing different levels of access to predators. At the same time specific studies are carried out to identify the ecological needs of each taxon in order to apply this knowledge to management measures.
• Controlling threat factors, especially the populations of introduced herbivores, which have become the principle disturbance to the ecosystem.
• Mitigating activities designed to decrease the pressure of these principle threat factors. The data obtained from the different scientific studies carried out and mentioned earlier support integral measures to restore the habitat. This has led to fencing in large, relatively barren areas to allow the summit scrub to recover free from the impact of herbivores. Recovering the ecosystem will later allow less abundant threatened species to expand, many of which had regressed because they lacked appropriate ecological niches. Finally, actions have been taken to protect areas that had been affected by fires or natural
• disasters against herbivores by fencing in the entire area in order to allow it to recover naturally.
• Controlling Public Use in order to guarantee the protection of the natural resources through the following measures:
  • Zoning which creates different categories of sectors within the territory, each with its own regime of uses.
  • Channelling mass tourism around the highways by establishing a network of lookout points, parking areas and other facilities.
  • Closing non-paved trails and installing lateral protection on the edges of the highways to avoid the dispersion of vehicles.
  • Implementing a suitable surveillance system.
  • Establishing a network of 35 trails covering a total of 155 km, all of them with signs, which allows practically the entire Park to be visited on foot.
  • Providing interpretation facilities and material to visitors, thus allowing them to gain a clear and concise idea of the richness and importance of the Park’s natural heritage.