A French tourist was arrested upon embarking a ferry to Nice from Porto Torres, in the northwest of the Italian island of Sardinia, after custom police found 41 kilograms of stolen pebbles in his trunk.
The tourist wanted to take home a little more than a fridge magnet as a souvenir and dug up 41 kg of pebbles and stones from the Lampianu beach. Police seized them and returned them back on the shore, while the man was arrested and now faces a fine of up to €3,000.
Taking pebbles, stones, sand or shells from beaches in Sardinia is illegal, punishable by fines of €500 to €3,000 and even jail time. The law has been in place since 2017, since the unique Sardinian while sand is famous and many people not only take it as a souvenir, but also sell it afterwards.
Sandy beaches are one of the main attractions of Sardinia. There are two threats: one is due to erosion, which is partly natural and partly induced by the increasing sea level due to climate change; the second is sand stealing by tourists.
Pierluigi Cocco, Sardinian environmental scientist
While taking sand and stones from the beach might not seem like a big problem, it has the potential of creating a huge environmental issue, leading to the faster erosion of the shorelines. “Only a fraction of the tourists visiting Sardinia spend their time digging up to 40kg of sand each. But if you multiply half that amount times 5% of the one million tourists per year, in a few years that would contribute significantly to the reduction of beaches – the main reason why tourists are attracted by the island of Sardinia”, Sardinian environmental scientist, Pierluigi Cocco, explained for the BBC after a similar incident in 2019.
Back in 2019, 14 plastic bottles filled with 40 kg of sand were seized from a Frech couple who, according to group commander of Olbia financial police, Carlo Lazzari, “wanted real Sardinian sand to fill their aquarium”. “That has been the most mind-blowing case to date”, the commander said, adding that their priority is to protect the environment.
“There is a proper online market, and demand is high for sand from Sardinia. Most of the buyers are sand collectors”, Lazzani told The Guardian after another incident in 2021. That year, the local Sardegna Rubata e Depredata (Sardinia Robbed and Plundered) group, advocating for the protection and preservation of Sardinia’s shores, estimated that 6 tonnes of sand were stolen just from January to mid-August.
