One of the inherited headaches of the new Town Council is the running costs for the Peña Escrita mountain park – it costs about a million euros a year to maintain.
The problem is, claims the Council, that the mountain park has lacked planning from its outset, meaning that all developments have been haphazard. The Councillor for the Environment, Luis Aragon, is setting his first priority at cutting costs, whilst at the same time searching for financial support from other public administrations.
So far, he has approached the provincial authorities, armed with a report that the municipal vet had drawn up, but with public-spending cuts taking place, right down from the Central Government, nobody is holding their breath. However, they have agreed to visit the park and assess the situation.
The park really has two sides to it: the zoo element, and the tourist accommodation part, which is run by a private, local company.
The zoological part is hampered both by its remoteness and by the fact that there are animals up there that really shouldn’t be, because they are either not suited to the climate (a hippo) or require specialised accommodation and care (a lion).
The total area of the park is around 400 hectares and is eleven kilometres from Torrecuevas, at an elevation of between 800 and 1,200 metres. As it isn’t exactly connected to the coast by a motorway, getting staff up there every day to manage that sort of land extension and the animals involved is expensive, to say the least.
If the park had a good income, that would help, but, apparently, the system for charging entrance fees is on the blink (not working) and has been for a while. So, the 40-odd vehicles a day that have gone up there during August, for example, didn’t have to pay.
Going back to the wildlife side, for it to function legally, it must comply with strict regulations that govern zoos, but Peña Escrita is woefully lacking, hence the series of expensive fines that have been levied by the Junta de Andalucia, which amount to around 600,000 euros.
Next comes the workers involved. Zoo keepers are specialised workers but the Peña Escrita staff aren’t; they’re just municipal maintenance workers that normally look after the towns urban parks and gardens; i.e., gardeners and labourers. Something has to be done about this, because the number of times that that you have dodged a mauling by a lion is no substitute for specialised training in animal husbandry and regulations.
Luis Aragon pointed out that you can’t feed the animals apples at a price of 1.90 euros per kilo – fruit at more affordable prices must be found, and that goes for meat, as well.
What is becoming clear is that if Peña Escrita is to survive, Almunecar can’t do it alone.
(News: Almunecar, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)