Croatia begins to restrict tourist access to its national parks
As Gazeta.Ru notes, Krka Park, located in Central Dalmatia, is known for its cascading waterfalls and dense green forests, with hiking trails running through them. The park is popular with European tourists, but in early June, Croatian media reported that access to the waterfalls would be restricted. Now no more than 10,000 visitors will be able to approach the highest waterfall, Skradinski Buk – they will be lucky to appreciate the beauty and power of the cascade of the rivers Čikola and Krka falling from a height of 46 meters and swim in their cool waters.
The restrictions were introduced due to understandable concerns: the number of people wishing to visit the park of amazing beauty is growing every year. In 2016, more than 3.5 million people visited here, and the park can no longer accommodate more. So in practice, this restriction means only one thing: tickets to visit the park must be purchased in advance.
Krka Park is not the only place in Croatia that cannot cope with the ardent love of tourists. Last year, crowds of vacationers occupying the wooden walkways of the Plitvice Lakes in attempts to take perfect selfies caused serious concerns among the authorities that the park would be excluded from the UNESCO World Heritage List. The problem is that travelers do not want to walk decorously along the walkways. They need to get outside the designated areas to post photos on Instagram without other people's figures, causing the trampled park to lose its pristine beauty.
Croatia is not the first to restrict tourist access to its national parks. Slightly earlier, Thailand did this (the influx of tourists in the country does not decrease – in 2016, 3.6 million people were counted here): here, 61 of 147 national parks are completely closed to tourists, including those located on the Similan Islands, Phi Phi Islands, Ha and Rok. Fortunately, Maya Bay on Phi Phi, where the film "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio was shot (since the film's release in 2000, the tourist trail here has not been overgrown), will remain open, despite the fact that tourists and fans of the film have already seriously damaged the local reefs.
Thailand has been closing parks – more and more each year – for the fourth year in a row, but only during the rainy season, when there are relatively few tourists here. This is done both for the safety of the tourists themselves and for the restoration of ecological balance. The parks will remain inaccessible to outsiders for five months, from October to December it will already be possible to enter them.
Iceland, which has been experiencing a tourist boom recently, is also trying to protect itself from the influx of tourists: over the past six years, the number of tourists has tripled here. According to forecasts, in 2017, this tiny country will be visited by 2.3 million selfie-stick-armed travelers – and this no longer pleases but frightens the 335,000 residents of the country, who are already worried about the fate of their volcanoes, geysers, waterfalls, lava fields and soft moss.
Among the natural attractions that especially suffer from visitor interest is the Bruarfoss waterfall. Once unknown to the general public, this stream of trickles falling into a deep canyon suddenly became a popular place for Instagrammers – today it is flooded with visitors who treat nature without due respect, and locals are not happy about it. The fact is that there is no road leading to the waterfall – because of this, tourists trample paths in untouched forests, leaving puddles of dirty slush in places where grass used to grow, damage tree roots, and continue to call Bruarfoss a "little-known waterfall."
Now Icelanders are trying to protect it: one local farmer has already received a grant from the state to build a three-kilometer road to the popular place, while another outraged rural resident, on the contrary, has blocked his private road, which previously allowed access to the waterfall through his land.
Conservationists are also concerned about the popularity of Lake Mývatn – they are now calling on the government to treat its condition as a natural disaster. In Vatnajökull National Park, drones are banned to protect the falcon population. Yet so far, measures aimed at tourists are not being taken at the state level – the government continues to tolerate the presence of "Game of Thrones" fans and other lovers of northern beauties here.
Fans of southern beauties are already facing serious restrictions: a year ago, Italy restricted access to Cinque Terre – a picturesque region of Liguria, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is daily flooded with travelers from cruise ships and yachts plying the Mediterranean Sea. Five villages on the very edge of cliffs, connected by a mountain trail, risk simply collapsing into the sea due to the activity of revelers – the threat of cliffs collapsing into the sea is becoming increasingly clear. In 2016, the number of tourists that Cinque Terre can accommodate was reduced to 1.5 million people per year – now tickets here must be purchased in advance.