Peniche, Portugal, July 19, 2024 (Lusa) - An official source from the municipality said on Friday that the temporary camping area on Berlengas Island, off the coast of Peniche, will reopen on Saturday. Four years ago, it closed due to restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The campsite will reopen with a capacity limited to 33 campers, divided into 14 spaces furthest from the cliff, according to the rules unanimously approved by the Peniche Town Council in June and seen by the Lusa news agency.
Campers are also limited to staying five nights in a row or 10 nights in total.
To reopen, the municipality in the district of Leiria obtained opinions from the Portuguese Environment Agency, the public health authority and the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF). However, they were conditional on the changes introduced.
Last summer, the local authority approved a set of rules for the campsite and updated the overnight fees, but the site didn't reopen.
On that occasion, the mayor, Henrique Bertino, explained that the closure four years ago was due to the Covid-19 pandemic and safety issues related to the cliff's instability raised by the Portuguese Environment Agency.
‘Some degree of instability was detected on the cliff, as well as the risk of small blocks falling that are adjacent to the edge of the upper limit of the ridge, so to say safety conditions, the APA proposed that the terraces closest to the cliff be rendered unusable, as well as the replacement of the space limitation fence with the respective warning signs,’ explained the town council in the proposal voted on at the time, to which the Lusa agency had access.
In addition to the limited capacity, the council updated the rate for each night to be applied to campers from €10.30 to €20.60 for two people, from €14.95 to €29.90 for three people and from €19.60 to €39.20 for four people, in the same tent.
This update took ‘into account the rise in inflation that has occurred in recent months and that, over the last 12 years, there has been no change in the prices charged,’ he explained.
Henrique Bertino acknowledged that the costs of maintaining the island ‘are exorbitant’ and emphasised the need to create revenue to meet these ‘financial demands’.
At the end of last summer, a group of citizens gathered on the island of Berlengas to protest the campsite's closure in 2020 and demand its reopening. An online petition, signed by more than a thousand citizens, was circulated to the same effect.
In 2022, visitors to Berlengas Island began to pay a fee of €3 per day, with half-price for children and young people between the ages of 6 and 18 and those over 65s.
According to the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests, 77,586 people visited the Berlengas Nature Reserve in the district of Leiria in 2023. This figure refers to the online registration of visitors—via the ‘Berlengapass’ platform—implemented in the same year, which brought in €207,000 euros in revenue.
The island of Berlenga has a daily limit of 550 simultaneous visitors, established by decree to minimise the effects of tourism on sensitive species and natural habitats, taking into account the small size of the archipelago.
Scientific studies also resulted in conditioned access for tourists, which was already provided for in the regulations of the Reserve's Management Plan, which has been in force since 2008 but was not set until mid-2019.
The archipelago was classified in 2011 as a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), has had nature reserve status since 1981, has been a Natura 2000 site since 1997 and was classified as a Special Protection Area for Wild Birds in 1999.
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