Doñana National Park or Parque Nacional y Natural de Doñana is a natural reserve in Andalusia, southern Spain, in the provinces of Huelva (most of its territory within the municipality of Almonte), Cádiz and Seville. It covers , of which are a protected area. It is named after wife of the 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia.
The park is an area of marshes, shallow streams, and sand dunes in Las Marismas, the delta where the Guadalquivir flows into the Atlantic Ocean. It was established as a nature reserve in 1969 when the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) joined with the Spanish government and purchased a section of marshes to protect it. The eco-system has been under constant threat by the draining of the marshes, the use of river water to boost agricultural production by irrigating land along the coast, water pollution by upriver mining, and the expansion of tourist facilities.A History of WWF
Doñana National Park has a biodiversity that is unique in Europe, although there are some similarities to the Parc Naturel Régional de Camargue of the Camargue river delta in France, with which Doñana Park is twinned. The park features a great variety of ecosystems and shelters wildlife, including thousands of European and African migratory birds, fallow deer, Spanish red deer, wild boars, European badgers, Egyptian mongooses, and endangered species such as the Spanish imperial eagle and the Iberian lynx.
The Doñana nature reserve includes both the Doñana National Park, established in 1969, and the Natural Park, created in 1989 and expanded in 1997, creating a buffer zone of protection under the management of the regional government. The two parks, national and natural, have since been classified as a single natural landscape. Due to its strategic location between the continents of Europe and Africa and its proximity to the Strait of Gibraltar, Doñana's large expanse of salt marsh is a breeding ground as well as a transit point for thousands of European and African birds (aquatic and terrestrial), and hosts many species of migratory waterfowl during the winter, typically up to 200,000 individuals. Over 300 different species of birds may be sighted there annually. Considered the largest nature reserve in Europe, several different scientific institutions have monitoring stations within its boundaries to ensure appropriate development of adjacent lands and conservation of the threatened species that inhabit it. The area was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1994; in 2006, the park recorded 376,287 visitors.
Geology and geomorphology
The geological profile of Doñana National Park reflects the development over several hundred thousand years of a deep aquifer and geomorphological features that have enhanced the biodiversity of the wildlife habitats presently found there. After the end of the last glacial period, the area was covered by freshwater and brackish marshes, ponds and sand dunes, with some marine intrusions caused by high-energy events such as tsunamis and large storms. A period of comparatively rapid rise in global sea level during the first part of the Flandrian interglacial was associated with the melting of the paleoglaciers, and reached its maximum level 6,500–7,000 years ago. At this time, Doñana National Park and the surrounding areas were flooded, and a lagoon, later called Lacus Ligustinus by the Romans, was formed. The pace of infilling of the lagoon has increased over the last 6,000 years, along with accelerated growth of sandspits and the creation of new inland marshes and wetlands. The extensive marshes of Doñana National Park now have a flat topography, with some inland depressions occupied by temporary or permanent wetlands, locally called 'lucios'. The whole area is protected by the Doñana spit, a wide sandy littoral barrier with mobile dune systems growing toward the southeast.
History
Antiquity
Although the topography of Doñana is a relatively new land feature as measured on the geological time scale, remains of Neolithic tools have been found in the area. Various ancient civilisations may have had a presence there as long as 2,800 years ago, including the Phoenicians, the Phocaean Greeks and the Tartessians, but archaeological remains attesting to such have not been found. In 1923, the German archaeologist Adolf Schulten, accompanied by Adolf Lammerer and George Bonsor, searched for the location of the ancient Tartessian capital in Almonte, where the Doñana dunes are, but found nothing of interest. These excavations were carried out at Cerro del Trigo and funded by the Duke of Tarifa and Denia, then owner of Doñana.Schulten 2006, p. 20 Nevertheless, in 1978 Schulten found the stele of Villamanrique at the nearby town of Villamanrique de la Condesa. Surveys were made in 2007 in the Hinojos salt marsh, or "Marisma de Hinojos", of Huelva province, in an effort to discover traces of the mythical city Atlantis. Noteworthy finds included the remains of Roman settlements, dating from the 2nd through the 5th centuries AD, which had been primarily engaged in fishing and fish salting or the preparation of garum. The Guadalquivir Marshes (Las Marismas del Guadalquivir), an area of marshy lowlands near the left bank of the mouth of the Guadalquivir, was then a large inland lake known as the Lacus Ligustinus in Latin. The lake slowly infilled with deposited sediment, gradually giving way to the current marshes.
Middle Ages Alfonso X the Wise In 1262, after conquering the vassal kingdom of Niebla, King Alfonso X established a Real Cazadero (royal hunting preserve) in the Las Rocinas forest, between the Rio Tinto and the Guadalquivir, partly due to the abundance of deer there, as well as the small sanctuary of Santa Olalla, since disappeared, on the Arroyo de la Rocina.
In 1297, his son Sancho IV granted Guzmán el Bueno the Lordship of Sanlúcar, consisting of the territory located behind Arenas Gordas on the left bank of the Guadalquivir estuary, and which remained in the hands of the House of Medina-Sidonia for over six centuries. The noble house was established in 1369, when Henry II of Castile granted the fourth Lord of Sanlúcar the County of Niebla. In 1493 the Catholic Monarchs donated part of the land of the present village of El Rocío to the royal secretary, whose son later sold it to the town of Almonte. Previously, new breeding stock had been introduced among the local populations of wild boar and deer, while wolf hunting was encouraged for the benefit of cattle and horse ranching.
Early modern Nearly a century later, Alonso Pérez de Guzmán y Sotomayor, 7th Duke of Medina Sidonia and commander of the Spanish Armada, bought back part of the land. His wife, Ana de Silva y Mendoza, daughter of the Princess of Eboli, moved to a country retreat there called "Coto de Doña Ana" (Doña Ana Game Preserve), which was the origin of the current name "Doñana"; the house was renovated years later as a palace. Reference to the use of Coto Donana as a hunting lodge is made in the first verses of the La Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea (Fable of Polyphemus and Galatea), which the lyric poet Luis de Góngora dedicated to the Count of Niebla, and in which he requests that the nobles suspend their hunting exploits to hear his verses. In 1624, King Philip IV stayed at the estate for several days as a guest of the 9th Duke of Medina Sidonia, and joined in some large hunts. He brought with him a great variety of comestibles, which included such luxuries as snow from the mountains for the frequent banquets he held in honor of the duke. In 1797 Francisco Goya stayed in the palace as a guest of his patrons, the 15th Duke of Medina-Sidonia and his wife, the 13th Duchess of Alba. Here Goya created his Álbum A, a collection of drawings, and apparently painted his famous portraits, La Maja Vestida ("The Clothed Maja") and La Maja Desnuda ("The Naked Maja"), rumoured to portray the duchess.
Late modern, creation of the National Park After 1854, with the publishing of a discussion of the area in a treatise called "Avifauna de Doñana: Catálogo de las aves observadas en algunas provincias andaluzas" ("Avifauna of Doñana: Catalogue of the birds observed in some Andalusian provinces"), by Antonio Machado y Nunez, the public began to appreciate its ecological value for the many different species of wildlife found there. Consequently, it was visited by British naturalists and hunters including Abel Chapman and Walter J. Buck, both of whom wrote books that alerted a wider audience in Europe to the strategic importance of Doñana for migratory birds travelling to Africa. Later, when José Joaquín Álvarez de Toledo y Caro (1865-1915) became the 19th Duke of Medina Sidonia, he inherited large debts and to pay them was forced to sell off various assets, including the Coto de Doñana, which he sold for 750,000 pesetas, finally detaching it from the noble house.
When the sherry baron William Garvey bought Doñana from the Duke in 1901, the estate was abandoned and in a state of ruin. Garvey restored the palace to its former splendour, and upon his death it passed to his brother Joseph and his niece Maria Medina y Garvey, who was married to the Duke of Tarifa, a forest engineer. In 1934 it passed to the sister of the Duchess of Tarifa, Blanca Medina and Garvey, who was married to the Marquis of Borghetto. In 1942, the Marquis sold it to a company formed by Salvador Noguera, Manuel Gonzalez and the Marquis of Mérito. Fifty years later the park was consolidated as a natural area.
Conservation
The Spanish businessman Mauricio González-Gordon y Díez, Marquis of Bonanza, whose family owned a large estate in Doñana, became interested in its ecosystems and their birdlife, and invited ornithologists from all over Europe to visit. In 1952, the Spanish ornithologists José Antonio Valverde and Francisco Bernis visited the property, with González-Gordon serving as their guide. Valverde and the González-Gordon family saw that the wetlands, with their richly diverse wildlife, were threatened by the Spanish government's proposals to drain them for farming and the planting of eucalyptus trees. Mauricio, together with his father, asked Bernis to try and influence Spanish dictator Francisco Franco into abandoning the plans. The trio wrote a memorandum which was presented to Franco himself by Mauricio's father Manuel. By November 1953 Bernis had finished a report on the status of the Doñana which showed that the area had exceptional ecological value. The group sought and obtained international support for their goals. The efforts of González-Gordon to dissuade Franco exposed him to some danger, but the Franco government conceded and the drainage plans were aborted.