Iberianature

Spanish places

I’ve been working recently on a new guide to places in Spain using Google maps as a way of organising them spatially. I find it interesting to see how places I’ve visited and/or written about over the years, join up together on the map. I still don’t understand how to get the best out of Google Maps, but I think that building up this database will allow lots of new forms of representing information. Visit Places in Spain

Have a look for example at these places:

• The Lubian wolf trap
• Mallos de Riglos
• El Cortijo del fraile

Posted in Geography, Iberianature news | |

Sparrows in Spain

The house sparrow is still probably the commonest bird in Spain with some 10 million pairs, and although they are certainly not threatened as they are in, say, Britain which has lost 5 million pairs in the last 30 years, some areas have shown alarming trends. The birds are less and less common in Madrid and have seen a 90% fall in the orange orchards of Valencia. Crónica Verde

The poet Miguel Hernández described sparrows as the “los gorriones son los niños del aire” - the children of the air,

Posted in Spanish poetry, Valencia, birds | Tags: Are sparrows common in Spain, house sparrow in Spain, Miguel Hernández, Poems about sparrows, Spanish poems about birds |

Death of the macho ibérico

Garfio, the Iberian lynx who was captured in 2003 and begat the first brood of lynx cubs to be bred in captivity, has died this week from a chronic renal infection at the age of ten. In all he sired 11 little lynxes. El País

Photo of Garfio in action from Lynxexsitu.es. Thanks to TP on the forum who I’ve paraphrased here.

Posted in Andalucia, Iberian lynx, Mammals | |

Traditional agriculture in León

Dave spotted this remarkable scene of “a working pair of Oxen  with a cart full of manure, which the driver was distributing over a small rectangle of newly ploughed land. Location: some 40km from León capital. More here on the forum.

Posted in Castilla y León, Farming, Livestock breeds In Spain | Tags: Oxen in Spain, Working farm animals in Spain |

Call for yews to form World Heritage Site

The Observatorio Convergente de Árboles Singulares y Monumentales, of the Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente has made an interesting call for all yews in Northern Spain to form a collective World Heritage Site as a method of protecting them, from the serious attacks suffered in the last twenty years. In the photo above, the stunning yew outside the church of San Cristóbal de Valdueza, in Ponferrada (El Bierzo, León). Crónica Verde

See also

• Yews in Spain
• Largest yew forest in Europe to be protected

Posted in Spanish forests | Tags: El Bierzo, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, Fundación Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, León, Ponferrada, San Cristóbal de Valdueza, World Heritage Site trees, yew protection |

Mongoose video

This video of a mongoose (meloncillo) interacting with a wild boar in Doñaña is interesting. Found on Naturablog.

Posted in Andalucia, Doñana, Mammals, videos | Tags: Egyptain mongoose in Spain, imagenes de meloncillos, Mammals in Doñana, Video de meloncillo, Videos of Doñana |

European shag in Asturias

Interesting video on the European shag in Asturias with English subtitles. Found on the Naturaleza Cantabrica blog, which is well worth a visit.

Posted in Asturias, birds | Tags: Birds of Asturias, Seabirds in Asturias, Shag in Spain |

Wolves worth more alive than dead

A new study by Sergi Garcia (who I do wildlife trips with) and Antonio Navarro has found that wolf tourism has become far more economic than wolf hunting in the Sierra de la Culebra. The study, presented at the Sociedad Española para la Conservación y el Estudio de los Mamíferos, simply adds up the earnings from both sectors . Earnings from wolf tourism (hotels, restaurants, varous purchases), brings in a remarkable 500,000 euros a year compared to 150.000 euros for all forms of hunting (including deer). ” Rural lodgings have increased from just 2 in 2002 to 15 in 2009. However, the study warns against the massification of tourism in the area and criticises the new wolf visitor’s centre to be opened this year in Sanabria.

More here (Estimación del impacto económico del turismo lobero en la Sierra de la Culebra).

News and photo from La Crónica Verde

Posted in Castilla y León, Mammals, Wolves, hunting in Spain | Tags: Sergi Garcia, wolf hunting in Spain |

First lynxes released in the wild

An important step has been taken this week with the release into the wild of the first Iberian lynx bred in captivity. The two animals were set free in Guadalmellato, Cordoba in the Sierra Morena. Three more are to be released soon.

Photo from El Mundo of one of the released lynx as it bounds into the freedoms of the Cordoban hills.

Posted in Andalucia, Iberian lynx | Tags: Cordoba, Guadalmellato, Iberian lynx in Cordoba, Lynx pardinus |

George Orwell in Gibraltar

I’m enjoying very much reading the newly published George Orwell Diaries, also available online here. In addition to politics and fascinating insights into the daily life of the late 1930s such as the price of eggs, there is a remarkable amount on natural history, clearly something Orwell found important and interesting. Although the diaries do not cover his time in the Civil War in Spain, he does write this from Gibraltar in September 1938:

Weather mostly hot & nights sometimes uncomfortably so. Sea variable mostly rather choppy. When no wind fish visible at least 10 feet below surface.
The Barbary Ape is said to be now very rare at Gibraltar & the authorities are trying to exterminate them as they are a nuisance. At a certain season of the year (owing to shortage of food I suppose) they come down from the rock & invade peoples° houses & gardens. They are described as large doglike ape with only a short stump of tail. The same species found on the African coast just opposite.
The breed of goat here is the Maltese, or at any rate is chiefly Maltese. The goat is rather small, & has the top half of its body covered with long & rather shaggy hair which overhangs to about the knees, giving the impression that it has very short legs. Ears are set low and drooping. Most of the goats are hornless, those having horns have ones that curve back so sharply that they lie against the head, & usually continue round in a semi-circle, the point of the horn being beside the eye. Udders are very pendulous & in many cases simply a bag with practically no teats, or teats barely 1/2 inch long. Colours black, white & (especially) reddish brown. Yield said to be about a litre a day. Goats apparently will graze on almost anything, eg. The flock I watched had grazed the wild fennel plants right to the ground.
Breed of donkeys here small, like the English. The conveyance peculiar to the place a little partly closed in carriage like the Indian gharry with the sides taken out.

Photo from Wikipedia by Karyn Sig

Posted in Gibraltar | Tags: George Orwell on natural history |

Latest lynx news

The transfer of captive Iberian lynx from Spain to Portgual has been completed with the arrival of two males, bringing to a total of 16 animals (11 males and 5 females) at the new breeding centre in Silves in the Algarve.

According to the latest figures from the Andalucian government, there are now some 223 lynxes in the wild in Andalucia, 63 in Doñana and 160 in the Sierra Morena. This is remarkable increase from the low point of an estimated 120 animals in 2004 (42 in Doñana and 78 in Sierra Morena). This year 21 cubs were raised in Doñaña with a total of 16 female territories. As far I know, these total figures do not include the 15 odd animals recently discovered in Castilla-La Mancha.

As for the recent deaths of two female lynxes, it seems that a violent death has been ruled out in both cases. El País

• More lynx images here from the Ex-situ Conservation Programme from where the above photo is taken.

Posted in Andalucia, Iberian lynx, Mammals, Portugal | Tags: Algarve wildlife, Conservation in Portugal, Iberian lynx in 2009, Iberian lynx in Portugal, Iberian lynx in the Algarve, latest Iberian lynx numbers, Lynx in Algarve, Portuguese lynx, Silves |

Sierra Nevada selected for world climate change studies

The Sierra Nevada is one the most vulnerable sites in Europe to climate change  thanks to its position between the Europe and Africa, between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and because of its mountainous nature, with huge changes in habitat in just a few kilometres. The Park’s Observatorio de Cambio Global (above photo) has now been  selected by Unesco as one of ten sites in the world for its climate change studies. Temperatures are expected to rise by 2 degrees in the next 40 years with a fall in rainfall if 10%, reducing significantly the amount of snow with serious affects on the ski industry, irrigtation and biodiversity. El País

The Sierra Nevada is one of the most important biodiversity hotspots in Europe. All five of Spain’s bioclimatic zones are present here from Mediterranean up to crioromediterraneo, supporting up to 2,100 plant species of the total of 7,000 recorded for Spain. The fact that the whole of the British Isles only support some 1,900 plants will give you some idea of why botanists get so excited about the place. More

See also (2004)

The unique plant communities of the high Sierra Nevada appear to be under threat from rising temperatures. According to the Andalucian government, a rise of 1.2ºC has been detected in the province of Granada over the last 20 years, which although not much in itself has been enough to endanger 65 endemic plants, most of which are only to be found in the highest altitudes of the range. Like its African and Andean counterparts, the pseudo-alpine habitat, known cumbersomely as crioromediterraneo in Spanish, is extremely sensitive to changing temperatures, and gradually plants are being forced ever higher in search of cold enough conditions. More

Posted in Andalucia, Sierra Nevada, climate change | Tags: Climate change in the Sierra Nevada, crioromediterraneo |

The Great Mountain Corridor

The Great Mountain Corridor is an idea to create a vast ecological corridor connecting the Cantabrian Mountains, the Pyrenees and the Alps, and possibly eventually, the Balkans, along which wolves, bears and other animals could roam relatively unhindered.

The GMC is a 1300-kilometre swathe of land connecting the Cantabrian mountains in Spain to the Italian Alps via the Pyrenees and Massif Central in France. It might even be extended into the Carpathian mountains of eastern Europe. “It’s not unrealistic to think that in 20 years there could be a good corridor between the Iberian Peninsula and the Balkans,” says Miquel Rafa of Obra Social Caixa Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, a charitable organisation that is promoting the project. Some of the land in the proposed corridor is already protected, and Rafa’s aim is to fill in the gaps. Over the past decade, his organisation has spent 8 million euro buying 80 square kilometres of land between the Cantabrians and the Pyrenees. He estimates that only another 80 square kilometres is needed to complete that part of the corridor. There are already success stories to report. Last year, a wolf from the Cantabrian mountains was spotted in the Pyrenees, not far from one of many packs that arrived there from the French Alps around 10 years ago - the first wolves in the Pyrenees since the 1930s. These packs made a hazardous crossing of the Rhone valley, parts of which are industrialised. It will be remarkable if groups from the Cantabrians and French Alps meet and breed in the Pyrenees, says Rafa, as the populations have been separated for over 800 years. To win local support, Rafa and colleagues have also provided shepherds with Pyrenean mountain dogs, a muscular breed that will defend livestock against wolves. More here from New Scientist article nabbed here “Megaconservation: Saving wildernesses on a giant scale”

See also Territori i Paisatge here

Posted in Cantabrian mountains, Conservation, Pyrenees | Tags: corredor ecologico cantabrico, Megacorridors |

European mink recovering

The European mink, the most endangered mammal in Europe after the Iberian lynx, appears to be recovering. There are now some 500 European mink in Spain divided between La Rioja, Castilla y Leon, Aragón, the Basque Country and Navarra. The animal was once common across Europe but was brought to the edge of extinction in the 1990s by the release of American mink which outcompetes it. A national strategy is aimed at eradicating the American mink in Northern Spain where the European mink should be present. Elimination of American mink from some rivers in Burgos and Álava is allowing the European mink to recover. El Mundo

More on mink on Iberianature

European mink photo: source Gobierno Vasco

Posted in Castilla y León, La Rioja, Mammals, Navarra | Tags: Carnivores in Spain, European mink numbers, European mink reintroduction |

Dehesa under threat

The holm oak and with it that unique ecosystem the dehesa are under threat. An invasive fungi phytophthora from Australia is ravaging across the dehesa causing a disease known as sudden oak death, aided by a deadly cohort of drought, several insects and other fungi. There are currently some 500 foci but scientists believe the worst is yet to come and that the production of Iberian ham could be seriously affected, not to mention the biodiversity based around this habitat. Regeneration and the more sustainable use of the system are seen as the only remedies.

El País

Posted in Environment, dehesa | Tags: holm oak diseases, phytophthora, sudden oak death in Spain |