After months of preparation, the new KJF project called “Restore the trails” was launched.
The first event of the project took place on Friday, March 29 and was held in an unbeatable setting: in Pollença, at the foot of the Serra de Tramuntana. In this town, they have been organizing the Tomir race for more than twenty years, which, as its name indicates, crowns one of the most emblematic summits of the island and the Tramuntana Mountains: El Puig Tomir.
The Serra de Tramuntana, a jewel declared a UNESCO world heritage site, has unique natural values thanks to its altitudinal gradient that goes from 0m sea level to 1440m from Puig Major, and its island character, typical of the Balearic Islands. In the Serra there are more than 50 endemisms identified and it is home to populations of emblematic species such as the black vulture or the balearic shearwater. However, the Serra de Tramuntana, thanks to its unique landscape, has a very high pressure of visitors. La Serra has an extensive network of roads that run through its approximately 100 linear kilometers. Many of these roads pass through private lands and disputes over ownership have arisen in recent years almost at the same rate as the number of visitors.
The goal of the Restore The Trails project is simple: to ensure the restoration of degraded trails and natural areas. A trail is a basic infrastructure for access to the natural environment and its condition will determine its accessibility, correct use and preservation of the space through which it passes.
In this first action, thanks to an organization led by a local community very dedicated to the event, things were very easy. Miquel Llompart, Xisco to his friends, is one of these people who loves the environment and its local people, putting himself 200% into the organization of the event. Miquel helped us to identify a trail that required action, involved volunteers from Pollença and joined us on the day of the event. The place where we perform is known as La Empeltada. A historic path runs through this area that connects Pollensa with Lluc. The trail is also a GR221 and one of the most used trails in the valley by cyclists and runners. This path with a palpable history on its dry stone margins has deteriorated over time. Many of the walls have fallen and sections of cobblestone have been stripped bare. This fact has caused the trail’s layout to become blurred and trail users use different shortcuts to shorten sections. These shortcuts, apart from scarring the area, are points where erosion appears quickly due to their slope, affecting the shortcut itself but also the links with the whole trail. During the day we were able to see examples of damage as well as redoing small walls to close these shortcuts and facilitate the renaturalization of these points.
The day was fun, dynamic and very useful for the participants who were able to understand and capture the importance of roads and their preservation.
Thank you very much to all of them.
*Pictures by Antoni Perelló.
