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The Shark Alliance has denounced the overfishing of sharks for their fins by Spanish ships. 60,000 tons were docked in Spanish ports last year.
“A new TNS Demoscopia poll, commissioned by the Shark Alliance, has revealed that people in Spain are unwittingly eating shark meat. Although 96% of those polled said that they did not eat shark, 76.4% were not aware that “cazón” and “marrajo” are sharks and nearly 33% said that they consumed these products.  The results were released in conjunction with a new report from SUBMON, titled Spain: A driving force in shark fishing around the world, that documents serious fishery problems including mislabelling sharks at market.”

Read Spanish unwittingly eat shark (Shark Alliance)

For more than a decade, Spain has been one of the top five world powers with respect to the fishing and marketing of sharks.  Spain’s fishing fleets, employing various gears,  span the globe, taking sharks as targeted and incidental catch.  Approximately 50% of the EU catch of “sharks” (all cartilaginous fishes: sharks, rays and chimaeras) is taken by Spain.

Dutch elm disease (grafiosis in Spanish) arrived relatively late to Spain. It was first detected in the 1980s, though it may well have reached the country a decade before, and has decimated 80-90% of common elms (Ulmus minor) in Iberia. One of the very few elm stands to have survived in Spain is in Rivas Vaciamadrid, near Madrid, as it is isolated from other trees. Efforts are being made here to conserve the trees here and ensure a genetic bank from which one day to replant elms across the country.
Wikipedia (Spanish)

Despite all the overblown furore over the bear hunter attack in the Vall d’Aran, the occassional presence of bears is attracting increasing numbers of tourists to the valley.

Read (La Mañana)
Hvala the bear

And according to Fundación Oso Pardo president Guillermo Palomero bears are no more aggressive than wild boars.
Read (also La Mañana)

The Guardian claims that concentrated solar power, a field in which Spain leads the way, could generate “quarter of world’s energy”.

Read in the Guardian

“Spain is leading the field on CSP: more than 50 solar projects in the country have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, it will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. Spanish companies are also exporting their technology around the world.”

Spain has been awarded with two new Biosphere Reserves: the island of Fuerteventura and its surrounding waters and Gerês-Xures, a natural area straddling Portugal and Orense, Spain. Spain now has 40 such reserves. In the photo, Dunas de Corrajeo, in northern Fuerteventura.

El Mundo

The programme to reintrodce the lammergeyer (bearded vulture) in the Sierra de Cazorla is continuing with the release last week of three more females. 12 birds have now been released through the technique of hacking in the range since 2006. Five chicks were also born in captivity in Cazorla this February.

El Mundo

The tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus)  is continuing its seemingly unstoppable march across Catalonia and is now present in 87 municipalities. The insect was first detected in the Iberian Peninsula in Sant Cugat del Vallès in 2004.

El Periodico

Hvala, the bear at the centre of the furore last autumn after biting a hunter, has been photographed with two cubs by wardens from the Vall d’Aran. Another bear, Sarousse, which was also released in 2006, may also have cubs, and if so could spell the beginning of a rise in the Pyrenean population.
Pireneodigital

Simon has this interesting post with photos of Los Monegros. “It’s been over twenty years since I was last here, and lately I just seem to view Los Monegros from the luxury of the High Speed Trains that wizz through the region at over 300 kilometres per hour. What I see is that the term ‘desert’, often used by protagonists on both sides of the debate, is far from the truth; the region is farmland, although the living there is clearly very hard.”
Read on Simonblog

Note: I wrote this on the high-speed view of the Monegros a couple of years back.
Read

The new iberianature Barcelona blog is starting to take shape…More on our walking tours shortly.
Barcelona blog

I liked this photo report of the fishing industry in Vigo by Ian Berry of Magnum Photos. The above image “ Gulls follow the trawler in the hope of picking up any fish left uncovered. 2008″
All photos here

Five wolf cubs
The mother wolf has five cubs
black and white behind a brush
She had five and she raised five
and she gave all five her breast to feed

To be sung to babies to distract them. Swivel your five fingers, the five wolf cubs, in front of the baby.

And according to the AEMET 2008 has been a warm year in comparison with the 1971-2000 period, though it has been the coldest since 1996 with an average temperature of 15.0 ºC.
AEMET (pdf)

Spain has given the world a limited number of mineral names, including Aragonite. Aragonite was first identfied by one Abraham Gottlob Werner from a piece from Molina de Aragón (Guadalajara), which he erroneously believed to be in Aragon.The largest deposits of Aragonite in the world are found in Molina de Aragón, and in Minglanilla in Cuenca.

• Aragonite on Wikipedia

• The Guardian
• Spanish wind power record
• Las renovables supera su objetivo de producir el 30% de la electricidad (WWF)

The reed bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) has been named bird of the year by SEO. There are just 400 breeding pair of the species in Spain.  Two sub-species are present: Emberiza schoeniclus lusitanica, an endemic of the Iberian Peninsula and clasified as in critical danger and Emberiza schoeniclus witherbyi which only breeds in Spain, soutrhern France and northern Morocco which is considered as endangered.
SEO
List of previous birds of the year

Anyone know what this fishing method is called? Taken by Rafiki on the River Guadaira south of Sevilla. Answers please by email or join the forum.
Read on the forum

• Read

Simon chanced upon this beautiful otter in the Catalan Pyrenees.

There could hardly seem a less promising place to go naturalising than the stretch of the Noguera Pallaresa just downstream from Tremp, ‘capital’ of the Pallars Jussà comarca in the Catalan pre-Pyrenees.

Read on iberianture

• Read in El Mundo

“The Picos de Urbión is one of the most important sections of the Sistema Ibérico, the mountain range that crosses east to west through the north of the Iberian Peninsula.  In this range we find the source of the Duero, one of Spain’s great rivers.  The region is also a popular location for walkers and outdoor enthusiasts and is home to the magnificent glacial lake, the Laguna Negra, an inspirational place of the famous Spanish poet Antonio Machado. “

• Read

According SEO/BirdLife, the wetlands and freshwater lakes of Spain are being destroyed at a critical rate, putting wildlife and habitats under extreme pressure. In a statement released to mark International Wetlands Day, SEO has condemned the loss of 68 percent of Spain’s freshwater lakes and 58 percent of the country’s coastal wetlands (over the last??). They state that these key conservation areas “are a mere testimony to what they were in the past.” In a similar line, Ecologists in Action blamed “industrial contamination, development, and waste dumping” for the loss of this essential habitat.

• Read in El País

• Read on the forum
• Maria’s walking tours of Cumbres Verdes

Most unusually, a wild pelican (Pelecanus onocrotalus) has turned up with a group of storks in Lerida. It probably breeds in Eastern Europe and usually migrates to Africa through Turkey and Egypt, but somehow has strayed too far to the west, and joined up with these storks who have come from Germany and Switzerland. I believe there are around half a dozen sightings of pelicans in Spain a decade. Photo from flickr, taken in Lleida on December 31st (by eb3alfmiguel)
Read about this story on the forum
Read in El Periódico

The new wolf hunting management plan in Castilla y León is alarming Spanish conservationists. The price for shooting a wolf in Castilla y León is set at 3000 euros, though many more are also killied illegally, some of which because of an increasing interest among illegal hunting rings under the tacit protection of the regional government. If you can get Spanish television, Informe Semanal is to show a report on the issue on 17th January.

• Fapas
• EU to accept wolf hunting (IbNat) “Some 200 wolves are hunted legally every year in Spain, and many more illegally, not just in Castilla-Leon but also in Asturias where 25 wolves were killed between January 2006 and March 2007, by officials after reports of sheep deaths. In contrast, in the Sierra de la Culebra, rich hunters pay up to 18,000 euros to kill a wolf.”

Above photo: Two wolves killed illegally in Valladolid in 2006. (El Pais). The agents seems to have taken pleasure in displaying theire capture.

SEO has teamed up with a well-known bank and produced this multimedia encyclopedia of the 563 birds seen commonly in Spain. The site is packed with useful information on everything you could think of connected with birds in Spain with heaps of pictures, sound, video, games for kids and maps, and easy to navigate around. It is, however, frustratingly to easy to close the main window. People with slow internet connections should probably refrain, but interestingly, 60,000 free CD-ROM/books containing the complete encyclopedia are also to be distributed.
Encyclopedia of birds of Spain

And on the topic of wind energy, the largest onshore wind farm in Europe started producing power yesterday today in northern Portugal. The farm is to provide enough electricity for up to a million people. A total of 120 windmills are dotted across the highlands of the Upper Minho region of Portugal which continues to forge its reputation as a renewables champion.
The Guardian

“Spanish firms are charging ahead with CSP: more than 50 solar projects around Spain have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, the country will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. The companies are also exporting their technology to Morocco, Algeria and the US. “CSP is at the very beginning of a big boom,” said José Luis García, at Greenpeace in Spain. “Spain is in a good position to develop and implement the technology. We have the sun so we are in the best position to lead in this field.”
Read in the Guardian

Another lovely post from Lucy on the squirrels in her local Barcelona park.
Read

The first loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) from eggs brought from Cabo Verde have hatched in Fuerteventura, in the Playa de Cofete in the Parque Natural de Jandía. More are expected to hatch from a total of 781 eggs. The project is planned to last ten years as it will take at least a decade to be able to begin to measure its success when hopefully some of those turtles hatched will return to the same beach as adults.

• El País
• More on Spanish rivers

Doñana has managed to halt the mortality of the Spanish imperial eagle (Aquila adalberto). The annual number of chicks has tripled in the last three years from 3.5 to 10.5 chicks a year according to an article by scientists from CSIC in the ‘Journal of Applied Ecology’, thanks to a reduction in the use of poison in the areas surrounding Doñana. Between 1992 and 2004 there was a dramatic increase in annual adult mortality due to an increase in poisoning in hunting areas surrounding the park. “The use of poison against generalist predators accounted for more than 54% of the total number of breeding eagles found dead since 1990, increasing annual adult mortality from 6·07 to 12·01%.”

• El Mundo
• Journal of Applied Ecology

La Crónica Verde has posted the latest figures for Iberian lynx in Doñana for 2008 complete with maps. A more positive breeding season than the disastrous recent years. 10 females had 23 cubs of which as far as is known 18 have survived. Total numbers of lynxes: 18 territorial females, 4-5 territorial males, 9 sub-adults, 18 cubs. 50-53 known lynxes in Doñana.

• Read in La Crónica Verde

• El Períodico
• El lince europeo en España

A young brown bear has been run over and killed in Leon in El Bierzo. This is the first confirmed case of bear being killed by a vehicle (a lorry) in Spain. The incident took place along the A16 dual carriageway (autovia). Experts from the Fundación Oso Pardo (FOP) are trying to find where the bear entered the autovia as it is fenced. According to the Fundación Oso Pardo, although bears are not common in El Bierzo, it is an area of dispersion from the nearby Alto Sil which supports a small but rising breeding population of brown bears, and so the bear was probably from this latter area. This bear formed part of the much smaller eastern population of Cantabrian bears with at most 30 individuals and so the loss of one is of some concern.

• El País
• La Vanguardia

Lucy chanced upon this Montpellier snake on Montjuic. It is remarkable that they still survive on a hill so hemmed in by urban sprawl and industry. It is also unusual for anybody to spot one. The fact that the individual is young bodes well for the population’s future.

• Read

Lisa has posted this very interesting series of natural history reports on her journey across north-east Spain. Setting off from Cantabria she passes through Cañon del Rio Lobos, Gallocanta, the Valencian coast, the Oliva marshes, the Serra de Espadá, the Ebro Delta, El Garraf, Llobregat Delta and the Monegros, on which she notes: “Nothing had really prepared me for the subtle beauty of Los Monegros. I was expecting an arid, barren desert, although thanks to Insectarium Virtual’s “Testing Los Monegros” I knew it was extraordinarily rich in insect life. What I wasn’t expecting were the vast canvasses of colours, shapes and forms. Shadowy folds in the moulded, flat-topped hills, once dark with Spanish juniper and pines now almost denuded by man, contrasted with foregrounds of the palest of soils dotted with dark green mounds of wild herbs, all blanketed by that big blue sky.”

• Read on the forum

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