The price is high, with many zeros. But the price is not right. The good put up for sale on a well-known online shopping site, the sand of Cala di Roto, the pink beach of Budelli has an inestimable value thanks to the incessant work of Mother Nature. The announcement was reported to the Legal Intervention Group which immediately notified the Forestry Corps. It should not be complicated to trace the seller, who is not hidden in the dark recesses of the web but has put his goods in a rather obvious showcase.

The report

"The beach, as is widely known, is hyper-constrained (landscape constraint, integral conservation constraint, national park and marine protected area of the Maddalena Archipelago), - we read in the note from the association - however, criminal behavior such as the removal of pink sand for sale (at a high price) is still present, unfortunately. In this case, they must be heavily sanctioned". It is not the first time that it has happened and not only with the pink beach. On the global digital market you can find shells, stones of particular shapes, sand from various Sardinian beaches, in 2023 a similar advert was discovered for Is Arutas. And besides, the impressive amount of seizures in Sardinian ports and airports cannot be explained only by the forbidden desire for a souvenir. "There is a real flourishing market at an international level", confirms Stefano Deliperi, president of Grig: "In the past, perhaps the gesture of those who wanted to take away a souvenir of their holiday was prevalent, today there is more information and those who take away sand and shells do so more often for profit".

According to the association, more controls are needed. "We have park authorities without governance, Asinara since time immemorial, and with insufficient means," is Deliperi's opinion.

The park

It is difficult to establish whether the sand was recently collected. The director of the Park Giulio Plastina is convinced that it is not: «Anything is possible, but today we have effective control and surveillance systems». Moreover, access to the pink beach has been absolutely forbidden since 1994. «I did not know about this sale, but what I can say, positively, is that for some time we have been receiving two to four packages of sand a year from people who perhaps took it 40 years ago, have understood its environmental value and want to return it. They come in person or send it by post». Often these are packages weighing several kilos.

Protected

Precisely the need to preserve the beach of Cala di Roto from the continuous thefts of sand that were slowly impoverishing and discoloring it, had led to its total closure in 1994, a forerunner of the beaches with limited access. Studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of the ban in preserving that very particular color, due to the shells of tiny marine organisms, that it shares with very few other beaches in the world and that can still be seen intact in Michelangelo Antonioni's film "Red Desert" that made it known to the world.

Catherine DeRoberto

REPRODUCTION RESERVED

© Riproduzione riservata