The Cabildo of Lanzarote and La Graciosa, through the Area of Land Management and Territorial Policy, will initiate the procedure to regulate the transit of buggies, quads, trial, enduro, cross motorcycles, and other similar vehicles in the natural environment of the island, with the objective of establishing a homogeneous island framework that allows restricting or prohibiting this activity.
As a first step, the Corporation will submit the initiative to public consultation for one month through the Cabildo's web portal, involving the town councils, owners of rural land, environmental organizations, sports clubs, active tourism companies and professionals, and the general public.
The president of the Cabildo, Oswaldo Betancort, points out that “Lanzarote has a limited and especially fragile territory, and we have the responsibility to act against activities that are causing damage and nuisance in different parts of the island. We want to establish clear and common rules to protect our landscape, our land, and coexistence in rural areas”.
“The technical reports provide us with sufficient arguments to move forward with this regulation. The conservation of Lanzarote requires concrete decisions and tools that allow us to act with legal certainty throughout the island,” adds Betancort.
For his part, the minister of Land Management and Territorial Policy, Jesús Machín, explains that “it makes no sense for an activity that travels through different municipalities to find different regulations depending on the point of the island where it is located. The Cabildo has the capacity to establish homogeneous criteria on rural land, and we are going to use the tools offered by legislation to regulate this situation”.
Machín adds that “the proposal we put on the table studies prohibiting the recreational and tourist transit of these vehicles on dirt tracks and rural land, considering the possibility that this type of activity can be developed in specifically designated and prepared enclosures for it”. This option is among the alternatives included in the documentation submitted for consultation.
Impacts on the territory
The technical reports from the Cabildo identify among the effects associated with the tourist use of buggies and quads soil compaction and erosion, loss of fertile soil, dust generation, damage to crops and native vegetation, disturbance to fauna, noise pollution, appearance of new tracks, landscape impact, and possible damage to archaeological and ethnographic heritage.
The initiative contemplates as a preferred route the elaboration of a Provisional Insular Ordinance, provided for in Law 4/2017, which would allow setting homogeneous criteria for rural land while the processing of the new Insular Planning Plan continues. The alternative of establishing a highly restricted Official Network of Motorized Routes will also be analyzed.
Once the consultation is published on the corporate web portal, contributions can be submitted for one month from the day following their publication.
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