Photo from La Olivilla centre in Jaén (EFE). The latest news on the Iberian lynx bodes well for the future of the species. Speaking at the III Seminario de Conservación del Lince Ibérico in November. Urs Breitenmoser, feline expert with the World Conservation Union stated “We have gone from a critical reality of extinction to a situation of just vulnerability. El Pais.
This year a total of 82 Iberian lynx were born, including 21 in captivity, and including cubs there now may be as many as 200 lynxes in Spain, up from 100 in 2002. In addition, more than 50 lynxes are doing their bit in the various captive breeding centres. A record 13 cubs born in captivity have survived this year. The first releases of captive lynxes in the wild are set for autumn 2009 in Guadalmellato, Cordoba.El MundoThere is, however, still a very, very long way to go. It is worth remember that as late as the early 1960s there were still between 5,000 and 6,000 iberian lynxes in the Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha has confirmed the presence of lynxes the Montes de Toledo made up of at least 15 animals and 3 breeding territories. The photo below was taken by an automatic camera tracking these Castillian lynxes, which well provide vital genetic variation to the Doñana and Sierra Morena lynxes. El Mundo
An important illegal hunting ring has been broken in the Cantabrian mountains of Asturias and León where two and six men respectively have been arrested. Various arms were found in their houses along with frozen and dried animal remains. Included among the boar, deer and rebeco (chamois) discoveries were specimens of endangered animals, a European Genet and a Capercaillie, the latter a species threatened with extinction in these mountains. The men were arrested following months of detective work by Seprona, the wildlife protection unit of the Guardia Civíl, and are suspected of charging money for guiding hunts as also found were large amounts of cash and paperwork stamped and ready for the transportation of the “trophies”. Other possible species to be found in the area concerned are Cantabrian brown bear and Iberian wolf. The case is continuing and more arrests are likely.
The symbol of Madrid represented by the bear and the strawberry tree is well known, but here’s a much earlier image showing Iberian bears liking for these arbutus cherries. The bear forms part of a C4th AD mosaic found at Villa Fortunatus in Fraga, Zaragoza, and is part of an agricultural calendar, representing the month of November. It can be seen at the Museo Provincial de Zaragoza. Sadly today, bears in Spain no longer gorge on these fruits in autumn to the extent as they did as they are largely absent from the range of the strawberry tree.
A friend of mine, Anna Gallés, is helping out with the Spanish version of iberianature - naturaiberica. At the moment she’s compiling this very useful directory of opportunities for environmental volunteer work in Spain. A wide range of activities is available from with working black vultures in the Balearics to helping amphibians in Catalonia. I won’t translate these activities into English as some limited knowledge of Spanish is always going to be necessary to join up to these programmes, but if anyone has any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to email me.
The bear cub found injured in June was released back into the wild on Tuesday in Somiedo.
Lisa notes: “The movements of her family (mother and two sisters) have been monitored closely and the release was made in the same vicinity. As nothing like this has ever happened before in the Cantabrian mountains, the outcome is far from certain although Fapas are hopeful that she’ll be accepted back into the family group. They recount the story of bear cubs orphaned in the Pyrenees and later adopted by another female bear. She’s been tagged and is carrying two radio-transmitters which they say will be lost when she moults next spring.” Read more on this by Lisa on the forum
Good news for the Iberian lynx. According to the Andalusian government, 61 lynx cubs were born this year in Sierra Morena, beating the record in recent years of 2006. This is more evidence that the Life Project is working. The population of lynx in the Sierra Morena could now be as high as 180 including cubs, doubling the figure for 2002. This will allow more lynx to be transferred to Doñana to avoid endogamy in the population there (though other problems will have to be solved). The news was announced during the opening of the second Iberian lynx captive breeding centre La Olivilla in Jaén. The centre has a number of large breeding cages and bigger pens for hunting. Junta de Andalucia
The official figures for cubs born in the Sierra Morena on the last seven years are:
While we cross our fingers and hope that Hvala settles into hibernation mode before the Aranese authorities can get their hands on her, a new book has been officially launched. Titled “Osas. El comportamiento de las osas y sus crias en la Cordillera Cantábrica” (Bears. The behaviour of female brown bears and their cubs in the Cantabrian mountain chain), the book is a compilation of information garnered over ten years of study by the Fundación Oso Pardo and is accompanied by an extraordinary dvd with footage of cubs playing and the darker, natural side of bear behaviour, infanticide. Contact Fop or the Fundación Biodiversidad, who financed the project, for your free copy.
If you’d like to show your support for the bear, Hvala, currently being persecuted in the Pyrenees (see previous post), there is now a petition in Catalan that can be signed. Click on “Signas per l’ossa” (nom = first name, cognom = surname).
Following the hysteria surrounding a hunter who was bitten by a bear last week (full story here on iberianature), the Catalan government has decided to study bears in the Pyrenees more closely and are to set up a new group to monitor the bears in the Aran valley to avoid any similar incidences in the future. Fapas have commented and point out that while this is the first incident of its kind in the Pyrenees, hunters are far more likely to suffer injuries (and death) at the hands of other hunters (20 hunters are killed by other hunters a year in Spain.) The bear in question Hvala is currently in France and so is safe for the time being from the attempts by the Aranese authorities to capture her. Ecological organisations are threatening legal action should they be successful. El Mundo
The images above (El Mundo) are the first of Hvala since the incident took place.
Update 27/10/2008. It is clear that this story has been blown out of all proportion to the facts and the risks involved. A man received slight injuries to his foot, and the result is the call for the removal of all bears from the Pyrenees. How many slight injuries to feet are sustained every day in the Pyrenees due to a whole host of reasons? Skiing accident. Let’s ban skiing. Iron falling on your foot. Let’s ban ironing. Children playing in the park. Let’s ban playing.
Thankfully the Catalan authorities are seeing sense in this matter and are refusing to listen to the yuppie owners of Vall d’Aran. As Simon on the forum points out the Catalan Minsitry of the Environment should no more take into account the opinions of hotel owners than these should listen to the former’s advice on how to make beds. For me, the underlying problem is the ridiculous amount of local automony and respect afforded to a small area, just because they happen to speak a different language. The Aranese have powers in the environment, while the next valley along which doesn’t happen to speak a different language, doesn’t. This means that they can I think, in effect, legally remove the bear in question. These small number of persons, in many cases greedily linked to the skiing and hotel industry, are going against what by all accounts are the wishes of the majority of people in Catalonia who want to maintain the bear reintroduction programme. It’s a mockery of democracy.
Update 26/10/2008. The Aranese authorities are now searching for the bear Hvala with the objective of shooting it with tranquillising darts and removing it from the wild. They claim this is to avoid a “generalised vendetta” against all bears in the area (El Periodico) Meanwhile, the ecological organisation Depana while lamenting the injuries to the man, lay the blame at poorly organised boar hunts, and note that bears and boar hunting are perfectly compatible when managed properly, citing the example of the Cordillera Cantábrica.
Original story. Bad news for bears in the Pyrenees. A boar hunter in the Vall d’Aran was bitten today by a bear and has suffered minor injuries to his foot and hand. Although this is the first time a human has been attacked by a bear in the Pyrenees since the reintroduction programme began in 1996, it has led to calls from the Aranese government for the removal of all bears from the range, claiming that the “bear reintroduction experiment has failed”. One suspects that the Aranese authorities have been looking any excuse to stop the programme. So far the Catalan government has called for calm. The bear in question is “called” Hvala, the same bear which was filmed last month. New Vote No to reconsidering the reintroduction programme at La Vanguardia below.
Climate change is beginning to affect vineyards in Spain. The start of the grape harvest has moved forward 11 days in the last 20 years. This is increasingly seen as a major threat to the wine industry in Spain and elsewhere. According to the experts, until now the changes to grapes caused by higher temperatures (fruitier flavours, higher acidity and higher concentrations of alcohol) have generally had a positive impact on the taste of wines. But if temperatures keep rising in Spain, wines could soon taste very different, ruining some vintages.
The area around Sierra Brava Reservoir and Casas de Hitos is one of the most important wintering area for cranes, waterfowl and steppe birds in Extremadura. It is now under threat from the proposed building of several thermosolar power stations, which it appears could very easily be sited elsewhere. As Clive points out on the forum. “It is important to note that the problem here is not the new technology itself for energy production but the poorly researched situation of the proposed plan”. See also SEO’s page in English on this story.
SEO note
“This will suppose the direct occupation of more than 300 hectares of land, directly on the principal winter roost of the common crane in Europe, with 11,325 cranes registered there last year.
Those two solar power plants also include a natural gas combustion unit each, to maintain the energy production during cloudy days, which will suppose the installation of both tall chimneys for the evacuation of waste gases and of cooling towers.
In order to be able to use the energy produced, both power stations will share an electrical substation and a new high voltage power line more than 38 km in lengh, to connect with the grid at Valdecaballeros, and which will affect the entire Vegas Altas del Guadiana zone, including two SPAs.
Martin kelsey of Birding Extremadura has brought this to the attention of iberianature so thanks to him, and he has drafted the following series of letters for you to get in contact with the authorities in Extremadura. Revenue from birding tourism now represents quite a fair of amount for Extremadura and the more people that contest this, the more the Extremaduran authorities are likely to rethink such a poorly planned scheme. Read the rest of this entry »
Just how rich the Bay is for cetaceans can be assessed with a quick number crunching session of the ORCA database. This database includes over 50,000 km of survey effort from volunteers working aboard both ferries between February and November 1996 - 2008. During the period 1996-2004, for example, cetaceans were encountered on 3,429 occasions involving 15,725 individuals of 21 species. This equates to an average of one encounter every 44 minutes of ferry cruising – a very high return for any whale watcher! Read
Rupert Glasgow has just sent me the latest news on Aragonese dinosaurs from the erudite maños at aragosaurus.com:
Great news for the “Aragosaurus” team of palaeontologists at the University of Zaragoza. This month’s issue of the prestigious Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (no. 18, vol. 3) features the description of a new dinosaur, Tastavinsaurus sanzi, by José Ignacio Canudo, Rafael Royo-Torres and Gloria Cuenca-Bescós. Tastavinsaurus sanzi is an early Cretaceous sauropod dating from the early Aptian, over 110 million years ago. This huge, plant-eating quadruped, characterized by its long neck and tail, is estimated to have measured some 17 metres in length and weighed between 15 and 20 tonnes. It belongs to the clade known as “Titanosauriformes,” which also includes the brachiosaurids and titanosaurians and as such contains some of the most gargantuan dinosaurs ever to have trampled over the planet. Its remains were first discovered by two amateur palaeontologists in the early 1990s at the site of Arsis, Peñarroya de Tastavins, in the Aragonese province of Teruel. The name Tastavinsaurus is derived from the nearby River Tastavins, which means “wine-taster” in Catalan, while the name sanzi is in homage to the Spanish palaeontologist José-Luis Sanz. The exceptionally well-preserved condition of its skeleton made it possible to define a new genus and species from the fossils. It is the most complete sauropod from the Early Cretaceous of Europe, and the most complete sauropod in Spain. It was excavated between December 1996 and January 1997 (in fairly inclement weather conditions), the fossils requiring more than 4,000 hours of preparation over two years in a specially constructed laboratory in Peñarroya. The original fossils, as well as a real-size reconstruction of Tastavinsaurus sanzi in all its splendour, can be seen at a special Dinópolis centre at Peñarroya in Teruel.
Anna Gallés is a natural history painter with a lovely eye for detail and a particular perchant for cranes. I’ve seen these gentle paintings in her studio and I found them enchanting in their calm. Anna tells me:
As a painter, I regard nature as my main interest. Drawing from nature requires observation and concentration, so it makes me learn a lot. Trying to sketch geese or cranes, in the cold, or exploring a lichen as it covers a branch, are teaching experiences. I try to capture the poetry that lies in the elements of nature, and sometimes I desire to add some imagination, too, because old stories and magic inspire me. Visit Anna’s blog and see more of her work
Birds can crash into planes and cause serious damage. Planes at Barcelona’s El Prat, for instance, receive some 22 collisions a year from birds. Airports throughout the world use a variety of methods to control their presence, but the most efficient has proven to be the use of trained falcons. Emitting the sounds of birds of prey or using flares have only a short-term effect, although new techniques may prove more successful. The birds get used to living with these so-called threats and the danger of collision returns. 95% of airports in Spain use falcons as a deterrent. There is for instance a “fleet” of 70 peregrine falcons at Barajas Madrid. Forestman reminds us with this video the role played Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente in setting up the first falconry units at Spanish airports.
Malaga Airport uses a falconry service made up of three falconers, a tutor dog (working in conjunction with the falcons) and a team of falcons and eagles (of the Harris species). Fully-experienced in the complexities of falconry, they patrol the airport grounds every day combining their techniques: waiting on and out of hood or similar, thus creating an area that is completely prohibited to all other birds.
With the waiting on technique, the falcon flies in concentric circles over the falconer and the dog. When the birds go into hiding, the dog helps to flush the prey, startling the birds to take flight, which are then caught by the falcon. With the out of hood and similar techniques, the birds go from the falconer’s fist to catch their prey. The main differences between the waiting on technique and out of hood and similar is that the latter are direct attack techniques, used to control rabbits and hares, herons, seagulls and the like, whilst the former is used mainly as a preventive measure.
The birds of prey currently used at the airport are employed to scare away bird fauna. Every day an average of six birds make deterrent flights of between ten to thirty minutes. The time and place are never repeated to ensure that the invading birds do not get used to a behavioural pattern that they will eventually get to know and, therefore, evade.
The majority of the time, the flights are preventative, with no attacks and expulsions. When the flocks are located, the falconer sets the falcon loose to drive the birds away from the airport grounds. Birds of prey always perform a natural selection process and choose the weakest bird that is less lightly to survive.
Before taking flight, the falconers weigh the falcon or Harrishawk (Parabuteo unicintus). Weight control determines, amongst other aspects, the aggressiveness of the bird of prey. The less they weigh the more aggressive they are and with greater desire to hunt. Furthermore, the bird of prey is tagged with a small radio transmitter on its tail that enables easy and permanent localisation.
The falconers train the birds of prey at the airport and training can last up to three to four months. During this period, by rewarding certain behaviour and punishing others, the falcon or Harris hawk is turned into a relentless hunter.
Malaga Airport also has a breeding programme for Harris hawks to ensure the maintenance and development of a service that helps, day after day, to make air traffic safe. Read Falconry at Malaga airport
Monte Perdido, the Lost Mountain, (3355m) is the third highest peak in the Pyrenees but until the early 19th century it was thought that to be the highest. It does, however, boast the highest waterfall (400m) in Europe and the second largest glacier in the Pyrenees. The mountain is home to many legends, perhaps the most evocative of which is this one:
A palace was built at the beginning of time by the mythical Enchanter of the Peaks, Atland, who put a spell on the palace so that only certain people could enter it. Polished walls and towers protected it and hid behind them vast gardens and meadows that were like an earthly paradise. The palace is still bound by Atland’s spell and can only be entered if you are riding on the back of a flying horse. More legends from Aragon
Here’s an old and spectacular favourite from El Hombre y La Tierra series by Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. The golden eagle has actually been trained to pull/knock animals off crags. I don’t think it’s fair to be too critical as it follows the standards of nature films of the time, when filming was incredibly expensive and they didn’t have the benefit of today’s remarkable equipment. The scene was filmed in a private estate in Segura y Cazorla. The unfortunate animal is, I believe, a mouflon. The rest, too quick footed for the eagle, are Spanish ibexes (cabras monteses). Read commentary on the forum where it was first posted, and where Clive suggests this behaviour occurs in the wild in Grazalema.
246 eggs of loggerhead turtles (tortuga boba - Caretta caretta) have hatched in the last few days on a beach in Cabo de Gata, Almeria. The eggs were taken from Cabo Verde, where a third of the world’s population of Caretta caretta lives, and form part of a reintroduction programme of the Junta de Andalucía, CSIC and the Canarian goverment (Loggerhead turtles in Fuerteventura). They have been taken to a reintoriduction sent which will raise them for the first few months to reduce mortality rates. El Mundo
It will take at least 15 years to be able to begin to measure the success of the project when hopefully some of those turtles hatched will return to the same beach as adults. Small populations of loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean exist in the Turkey and Greece.
Lucy has posted on her iberianature blog this fantastic series of five trip reports on her recent trip to Aiguestortes in the Catalan Pyrenees. Enjoy.
The renewed silence was broken by a piercing whistle, as if a referee had just stopped play. The first time I ever heard a marmot’s warning call, I was sure it was a bird. One tone warns of raptors and another of danger on the ground. The Pyrenean marmots didn’t survive the last ice age, but were re-introduced in 1948, and have been burrowing there extensively ever since. They are Europe’s largest and perhaps shaggiest rodents, preferring to stay underground on hot days, as well as hibernating throughout winter. This upright marmot was on lookout duty. Read
