Get to know Deltapolet Natura i Sabers, Star Awards winner 2019
Congratulations! Star Awards 2019 winner “Contribution to conservation”
“Deltapolet Natura i Sabers“, the catalan name for “Deltapolet Nature and Knowledge”, is the EUROPARC Star Awards 2019 winner in the category of “Contribution to conservation“. Their actions and services are based on sustainability and conservation, and support enormously the Delta del Ebro Nature Park (Spain). In this category, EUROPARC has evaluated the efforts dedicated to protecting natural and cultural heritage and the ways to enhance their awareness and understanding.
Essence, Awareness, and experience. More than tourism…
…is how they define themselves. Throughout their activities such as guided tours, educative activities and even an ecocultural safari, they create a different experience for the visitors that want to live the essence and roots of the Ebro Delta. They aim to make everyone love their park as much as they do.
Delta Polet’s values and communicating actions are strongly based on the recovery of the traditional knowledge of the Delta. The manual rice cultivation, traditional fishing and the work and handcraft of vegetal fibers are the core of the knowledge they want to spread and maintain as a vehicle to guarantee the sustainability of food outside of oil industry and the preservation of the fauna and flora of the Park.
Tourism is art, passion, imagination, culture and hospitality.
At the end of the activities, each visitor becomes a new ambassador of sustainable tourism and is awarded with an ecotourism certificate. Making society understand the threats of massive tourism and the importance of the transition to sustainable tourism contributes to the well-fare of both nature and Parks. By this mean, the visitors compromise themselves to prioritise sustainable destinations in the future. These values are well remarked in each one of the services provided, as they respect the environment by avoiding visits to fragile and threatened areas of the park and measuring and respecting the charge capacity.
Furthermore, they collaborate with the Park and other NGOs in conservation activities both directly in the field and also through publications and social media. Since 2005, they support and are part of the European Charter of Sustainable Tourism.
More than 30 years of history
Deltapolet follows the philosophy of Polet, the owners’s father, who lived in the period when all Ebro Delta’s traditional practices started to disappear as machines were taking over the work. He decided to maintain the knowledge of his ancestors and to be able to get resources without using machines or chemical products.
In 1983, Polet fought to create the Ebro Delta Natural Park and avoid the creation of a vacacional resort. Nowadays, Deltapolet follows the tenacity of their father to share the cultural heritage with the world to save one of the most biodiverse places on the Mediterranean Spanish coast.
Thanks to their work, they became a reference for sustainable tourism and preside and participate in several associations of stakeholders in the region and Spain.
An online public voting is now running, to select one winner out of the five awarded, who will be invited to present their business at EUROPARC Conference 2020. VOTE NOW!