The mayor’s office in the northern Spanish city of Cabezon de la Sal has banned tourists from hugging trees in the local redwood forest.
In recent years, the trees have suffered greatly from the onslaught of tourists, who damage the bark by hugging the trunks and trampling on the roots.
In the future, the mayor’s office also plans to create trails that will be so that tourists cannot go directly to the trees. The issue of charging an entrance fee to the forest is also being considered. They want to spend this money on additional security.
The approximately 2.5-hectare forest was created artificially (these trees grow naturally only in North America) in the 1940s and contains about 840 sequoias. Initially, the trees were going to be used for timber, but in 2003 the forest was declared a natural monument. Today it is visited by about 200 thousand tourists a year.