Tourist Arrested After Police Find 90 Pounds of Pebbles in his Trunk

A man has been arrested after attempting to leave the Italian island of Sardinia with 90 pounds of pebbles in his car trunk.

The French tourist was attempting to return to Nice via a ferry from Porto Torres, in the northwest of the island, when he was stopped by Italian customs agents.

"He had in the trunk of his car 41 kg [90 lbs] of pebbles and stones from Lampianu beach (north-west), which were seized and will be put back in place," Italian customs said in a statement.

Sardinia, a large Italian island in the Mediterranean, is known for its gorgeous white-sand beaches, which are so precious that since 2017 it has been illegal for tourists to remove sand or rocks. This move was made to protect the beaches from being eroded away, a process that is accelerated if tourists remove the sand themselves.

"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," Sardinian environmental scientist Pierluigi Cocco told the BBC in 2019.

"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."

The fine for taking sand, pebbles or shells from the beach can range from €500 to €3,000 ($544 to $3,265).

Much of the stolen sand is sold, as there is a booming demand for Sardinian beach materials online.

"There is a proper online market, and demand is high for sand from Sardinia. Most of the buyers are sand collectors," Carlo Lazzari, the group commander of Olbia financial police, told The Guardian in 2021.

Sardegna Rubata e Depredata (Sardinia Robbed and Plundered), a local group campaigning for the preservation of the island's beaches, predicted in 2021 that at least six tonnes of sand had been removed between the start of the year and mid-August.

Sand has been stolen from Sardinian beaches for decades, with the famous pink-sank beach of Spiaggia Rosa on the island of Budelli being looted to such an extent that it was closed to the public in the mid-1990s.

In recent years, many people have been busted with forbidden hauls of sand and other beach materials, including a family in 2021 that had the police called after they filled a plastic bottle with sand.

"When the police arrived, the couple denied it and even tried to hide the bottle under a beach towel," Andrea Abis, the mayor of the town of Cabras, told The Guardian. "It beggars belief. But unfortunately, this isn't a rare occurrence."

In 2019, a similarly large bounty was found after a French couple was found with 88 pounds of sand inside 14 plastic bottles in the back of their car.

"That has been the most mind-blowing case to date," Lazzari said. "The couple wanted real Sardinian sand to decorate their aquarium."

"We don't want to terrorize tourists, who for Sardinia are a resource, but to make people aware," said Lazzari. "More than anything, our objective is to protect our environment."

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