What annoys the local mayor most is that tourists try to conceal their crimes on the white sand beaches of the west coast of Sardinia.
One morning in late July, a visitor—a couple with children, from the mainland Italy – Found by a beach tourist, plastic bottles were filled with sand. Witnesses immediately called the police.
“When the police arrived, the couple denied this claim and even tried to hide the bottle under a beach towel,” said Andrea Abis, the mayor of Cabras, which owns 20 miles. Pristine coastline. “It’s unbelievable. But unfortunately, this situation is not uncommon.”
The couple was fined 1,000 euros (£850) on the spot.
Every summer, the beaches of Sardinia looted tons of sand, although it is illegal to take sand, shells and pebbles from the Mediterranean islands since 2017.
The fine is between 500 and 3,000 euros, and those who try to leave the island in large numbers face imprisonment.
In most cases, the culprit is foreigners, who cannot resist taking Sardinian sand home as a souvenir, or use it in a fish tank or sell it online.
The Nordic people are particularly inclined to fill their campers with plastic bottles filled with sand, each of which is marked with the name of the beach where precious grains were stolen.
In 2019, the police arrested a French couple Use 40 kg of sand When they were about to board the ferry and go home, they were packed in 14 large plastic bottles in the trunk of their car.
“This is the most shocking case so far,” said Carlo Lazzari, the commander of the Olbia Financial Police Group. “The couple wanted real Sardinian sand to decorate their aquarium.”
Lazzari is part of a special police force responsible for monitoring the three airports and ports on the island. Every day in summer, when passengers pass through the luggage inspection, they will find bottled sand in their luggage. The team is also searching for illegal sales on the Internet.
“There is a suitable online market and there is a high demand for Sardinian sand. Most buyers are sand collectors,” Lazari said.
So far, fines worth thousands of euros have been issued this season. Lazari said that most people are unaware that they have committed a crime and usually pay a fine quickly to avoid being affected by the law.
This summer, a publicity campaign was launched on TV, radio and social media, highlighting the crime and the extent of its damage to the Sardinian environment. Volunteers patrolled beaches and road signs, clearly warning that the theft of natural resources is strictly prohibited.
“We don’t want to intimidate tourists, they are a resource for Sardinia, but to make people aware,” Lazari said. “Most importantly, our goal is to protect our environment.”
Over time, environmentalists in Italy worry that the removal of sand will reduce beaches, especially beaches like Sinis, which contain white and pink quartz sand produced by rock erosion.
“We call it fossil sand because from a geological point of view, these particles do not reproduce, so every particle we lose will never come back,” Abis said.
In 2015, staff at airports and ports across Sardinia worked together to create the Sardinia Robbery and Plundering Organization, a volunteer organization that publicly condemned sand stealing and worked for most of the winter. The beach where the grains are collected is hydrated.
“It’s a tough job, but it’s also very fulfilling, because we know we are doing something that is good for the environment,” said Franco Muro, president of Robbery and Pillage in Sardinia. “We Sardinians are very attached to our island.”
Muro said that any sand removal “will cause disturbances to the ecosystem and its dynamics.”
One of Sardinia’s most coveted grains is the grain found in Budelli, an uninhabited island off the north coast, famous for its pink sandy beach, Spiaggia Rosa. Before tourists were barred from entering the beach in the mid-1990s, sand stealing was a common occurrence.
Several people regretted their illegal actions and returned the sand to Sardinia. On display at the Museum of Mineralogy and Wildlife in Caprera, an island near Budelli, are sand samples—in some cases, thefts can be traced back to the 1980s—and confession letters.
Museum manager Tommaso Gamboni said: “When I went to the Caribbean, I took a few photos as souvenirs, nothing else.”
Gamboni and other volunteers monitor the beaches of La Maddalena Islands every day to ensure cleanliness and remind beach visitors to pay attention to the rules. “But for us environmentalists, sometimes it feels like a losing battle,” he said. “Whenever we try to educate people on the beach, we get a lot of insults.”
The penitent is not enough to appease Abis. “Every time the sand is cleared, I feel that a part of the child’s future is taken away. People are stealing things that can never be recovered.”
