“It is a shame that this had to happen for the City Council to decide to change its attitude.” This is how Teresa Abáigar, the director of the Arid Zones Experimental Station (EEZA)a research centre in Almería dependent on the CSIC, the obstinacy of the Almería City Council to hold a series of concerts in La Hoya Park, despite the warnings from the entity that the noise could seriously affect the well-being of the 400 gazelles that live in the area. The concerts were held and four gazelles – one of them a baby and another about to give birth – and a female aoudad died from the stress and agitation caused by the decibels of the music.
Although the City Council initially transferred to the EEZA-CSIC the urban compatibility of holding the concerts in that place – a plot that is part of the La Hoya Experimental Estate that the CSIC owns at the foot of the Alcazaba and which gave in 2007 to the council to build a park there – after verifying the lethal consequences it has had for the gazelles, it has decided to back down and change the location of the Flamenco Festival, which was also scheduled to be held in the venue’s auditorium. . “We regret what happened. If we had known, we would not have held the concerts there,” acknowledges Antonio Urdiales, councilor for the Sustainability Area, who indicates that the study of acoustic measures commissioned by the municipal government determined that the decibel level was low. “We were not aware that this low-decibel noise could lead to mortality,” he explains.
But, although the City Council has backed down, the death of the gazelles has ended up in the Prosecutor’s Office. Podemos, IU and Equo presented a complaint this Wednesday to the Provincial Environmental Prosecutor’s Office requesting that it investigate what protection measures against noise pollution and other environmental provisions were adopted for the celebration of the concerts. For its part, the PSOE will also present a letter to the Public Ministry next week, but through criminal means, because it understands that, after the approval of the animal welfare law, it is included in the Penal Code within the type of animal abuse. , do it “at a public event.”
“The advice of scientists has been ignored,” Abáigar laments. Since the first gazelles and aoudads arrived from Western Sahara in 1970, the EEZA has been a benchmark in the research and recovery of endangered North African ungulate species. The wild animals have acclimatised in the La Hoya Experimental Farm, an area of some 20 hectares, which at the end of the last century was located almost on the outskirts of the capital of Almería, but which has now been constrained by urban development. However, this is one of the largest reservoirs of the Molder gazelle, the Cuvier’s gazelle, the Saharan Dorcas gazelle and the Saharan aoudad, with 400 specimens in total. Researchers from the CSIC carry out their work there and reintroduction projects are being developed in Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia. That is why the loss of four specimens, three of them females, is of greater significance. “There is no turning back. We have lost animals of incalculable value to conservation programs,” Sonia Domínguez, a veterinarian at the research institute, recalled this week.
In 2007, the CSIC signed an agreement with the Almería City Council by which it transferred some plots of the property to develop a peri-urban park at the foot of the Alcazaba and revitalize the area, which had become a garbage dump. The new design houses an auditorium in which the Almería council always aspired to hold concerts. “It was intended in 2020, but then we submitted a detailed scientific-technical study on the impact that noise pollution could have on animals and the administrative requirements that had to be met when holding events of this type. The sensitivity of that government team was different,” indicates the director of the EEZA.
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Four years later, CSIC scientists learned from the press of the City Council’s intention to hold a ceremony in the enclosure, 60 metres from where the animals are located, the Alamar music festival. The EEZA sent a letter to the council demanding that the celebration be moved to other venues and warning about the danger that noise pollution could pose for species that were also in the middle of their reproduction period.
The City Council did not give in and the concert series was held between June 20 and 22. Three days later, the CSIC reported the death of five gazelles: due to traumatic injuries caused when trying to cross the fence that protects the farm, another as a result of an abortion, and one calf because its mother stopped breastfeeding it. “All caused as a result of the stress and agitation caused by the concerts,” explained Domínguez. “Her death could have been prevented,” she stressed.
During these days, the City Council has insisted through a statement that at the Alamar festival “a calibrated limiter was used so that 92 decibels were not exceeded at any time (equivalent to the sound of traffic in the city or on a highway). ) that was not even activated, since the measurement and telemetry reports of the limiter incorporated into the sound system by an external company indicate that 65 decibels were not exceeded outside the wall (the equivalent of a conversation between three people and less than the ringing of a telephone).
“The concerts will be moved elsewhere, we hope that this will help prevent this from happening again,” says the director of EEZA, regarding the decision of the City Council to move the Flamenco Festival performances to the Plaza Vieja, which was to be held in La Hoya Park between 15 and 20 July. Urdiales indicates that the CSIC has been asked for information on the death of the gazelles to prevent a similar episode from happening again. “We do not want to question what happened, but rather to find solutions,” says the councillor.
The solution is to move the gazelles to a larger environment in order to protect the animals. “This is the priority of the CSIC, and we are looking for a new location,” says Abáigar. “We have an agreement for the City Council to look for land elsewhere. We know how important it is to improve the conditions of the research centre,” says Urdiales. The death of these unique and endangered specimens shows that if the gazelles do not have the possibility of relocating, it is the musical events that must do so in order to preserve animal welfare. Meanwhile, the rest of the species on the farm are gradually calming down. “They have returned to their usual noises,” says the person in charge.
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