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Natural Sites in France faces the menace of over-tourism

Monday, July 11, 2022

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Can the cliffs of Étretat in Normandy manage the rush of millions of visitors each year? For this summer, France is heading into the high season of the holidays, Shaï-Hannah Mallet-Bitton, who is an activist with the Étretat Demain association, is currently disturbed by this question. The lawyer says that every year the situation is getting worse, and it’s happening quickly. She said that she is only 28 years and she can see the level of the site getting degraded with passing time. In this village, she had spent part of her childhood, with 1,400 inhabitants in Normandy.


Everywhere we can see the imprints of overtourism with overflowing bins of trash, hiking trails getting damaged with potholes, more-frequent landslides, from the beach areas, up to 400 kg of pebbles are carried away every day. Jean-Baptiste Renié, an Étretat city councillor, is quite worried that the wastewater treatment facility of the area is getting destroyed with each day, as it wasn’t built up to take the pressure of 5 to 6,000 visitors every day along with the local population. In 2021, the system had to be shut down for maintenance.


Once the tourists have left, after every big weekend, the town gets massively unclean. Shaï-Hanah Mallet-Bitton says that if anyone visits the cliffs after a busy weekend, will get to see papers everywhere, along with masks, cigarette butts etc.

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