Campaigners
urge Elton John to boycott music festival in Portugal
In
an open letter, environmentalists say locating Marés Vivas event
near a nature reserve threatens nesting birds and wildlife
Hannah
Ellis-Petersen
Friday 29 April 2016
17.24 BST
Campaigners have
sent an open letter to Elton John asking him to boycott a Portuguese
music festival due to concerns it will be an environmental disaster
for a nearby nature reserve.
Marés Vivas
festival, which takes place every July in Gaia, Porto, has been moved
for the first time to an area of land just 100m from the nature
reserve of the Douro River Estuary.
The 150-acre
reserve, which is protected under Portuguese law, is home to more
than 220 species of birds, including eagles, kingfishers and
cormorants, and is one of Europe’s most popular sites for
birdwatching.
Local campaigners
have written to John, who will headline Marés Vivas alongside other
British singers James Bay and Tom Odell, asking him to take a stand
against the “environmental damage”.
”More than your
business and your art, please consider the environmental importance
of the area. The reserve is very delicate, special and vulnerable...
the area is very special to some species of birds for stopover and
for nesting,” says the letter, which is signed by figures such as
biologist Serafim Riem, Lucília Guedes, vice president of the Fund
for the Protection of Wild Animals, and João Branco, director of
Portuguese environmental group Quercus.
About 30,000
visitors a day are expected at the music festival, which was moved
from its previous site after a dispute with the owners. Campaigners
are concerned that crowds, noise and lights so close to the estuary
will have a lasting impact on the nesting birds and wildlife.
The letter says
“damaging” preparations for the festival had begun, including
bulldozing and cutting down trees. It says the site of the show was
home to the protected Iberian emerald lizard and that if the festival
goes ahead “the whole area, including the nature park, is going to
lose its state as a protected area”.
The campaigners, who
quote the lyrics to John’s song Birds in the letter, said they were
“pleading that you do not take part in this environmental nuisance
of a music festival... Elton John, we strongly believe that if anyone
is able to change the stubborn minds of the festival managers it is
you.”
As well as the open
letter to the singer, campaigners and Quercus have taken the case to
court. Last week, a judge ruled that construction and bulldozing on
the land be temporarily halted because it infringed on the
ecologically protected area. Another case will be heard next week
about the environmental impact of the festival on the thousands of
birds.
Another signatory,
Bernd Markowsky, who started the SOS Douro Estuary campaign, said the
mayor of Vila Nova De Gaia, Eduardo Rodrigues, and the festival
organisers “have no concern for the environment; they don’t want
to know, they don’t care”.
He said: “We have
photographs that show how many lizards have been killed in the short
time they began bulldozing the land, but they have openly said it
didn’t matter how many had been killed because there will still be
thousands left. This area is protected by the law but that has not
stopped them.”
However, Rodrigues
denied it would have any environmental impact, and said he had
commissioned a report which proved this.
“I’m very
concerned about environmental issues. This report shows that there
are no consequences, no impacts … there are no differences between
the last location and this location,” he said.
“It shows also
that we had paid attention to the law and to environmental impact.
The question, for me, is another one: what’s the difference from
the last nine years of the location near the reserve? My answer:
politics, and the use of public panic to take political advantages …
You must know that migratory birds pass for the reserve in September,
not in July.”
Rodrigues condemned
the letter to John and said he did not believe it would change
anything.
“This is not a
boycott, but terrorist behaviour that I believe will not have
consequences on Elton John, who knows very well the distinction
between a fair argument and a boycott,” he said.
But Branco said the
mayor’s report was flawed and that the festival was in “clear
violation of the law that protects the birds”, claiming: “There
are so many spaces where this festival could be held, I don’t know
why they are insisting here. They thought they could get away with
this, but we are not giving up without a fight.”
Representatives for
John did not respond to a request for comment.
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