The test device set up in the summer of 2022 made it possible to divide the attendance of the Sugiton Calanque by six. It is extended to the whole summer and prolonged period to better assess its environmental effects.
by Gilles Rof (Marseille, correspondent)
“A concrete action for regulating attendance in a sensitive natural space is possible”. In the documents submitted this Tuesday, November 29 on its board of directors, the Calanques National Park (PNC) displays its satisfaction. The compulsory reservation experience implemented in the summer of 2022 to limit the attendance of Sugiton’s creeks and fallen stones, can “undeniably be considered a success”, writes the public establishment.
A success such as the administrators of the only peri-urban national park in France, located just a few kilometers from the center of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), unanimously decided to perpetuate the experience on the same area, Until the summer of 2027. But also to expand it in 2023 to the entire most touristy season – July and August – and during the ends of the end of June and early September. An extension which will make it possible to evaluate more precisely and over a scientifically legitimate period the environmental effects of the measure.
Faced with a galloping surface of these two exceptional sites, contiguous and easily accessible from downtown Marseille, the public establishment innovated by subjecting their access to a free but compulsory reservation by the Internet and limiting their accommodation capacity. “A final management lever”, according to the PNC, in order to maintain the perilous balance between reception of an ever more numerous audience and preservation of the environments for which he is responsible.
absence of tensions to access
A gauge of four hundred people a day was fixed for this 9.5 hectare area, where more than 2,500 visitors could hurry up to the full summer. The experience has punctually started at the end of June, but only became daily from July 10 to stop on August 21, while the summer season was still in full swing.
The test period has issued several lessons. The visit license has not lowered the attraction of Sugiton’s Calanque. All the available places were taken by storm within three hours of the opening of the reservations, three days upstream. But, surprisingly, the real average attendance of the site remained very below the gauge, between 200 and 250 visitors per day. “Daily, more than one hundred people who have reserved did not show up at the access points in the regulated area,” notes the Calanques National Park. A “dozen people” has also been turned back every day for not taking care to register. A “marginal” figure, according to the PNC, which sees it as the effectiveness of its communication and information points placed upstream of the control.
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