Castilla y León has censused a total of 193 herds, which is eight percent more than in the previous record of 2012-2013 when 179 were counted, with an expansion towards the southern and eastern areas of the Community, data that “evidence “a “magnificent state of conservation” of the species whose management the Board will “demand to recover.”
This was announced at a press conference by the Minister of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Planning, Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, the general director of Natural Heritage and Forestry Policy, José Ángel Arranz and the head of the Natural Spaces service, Flora and Fauna, David Cubero.
The census, which corresponds to the 2022-2023 decade, confirms that 158 herds are north of the Duero, with “saturated” areas in the Montaña-Palentina and León. Here, the canid has grown by four percent, while in the south the growth has shot up to 30 percent, with a total of 35. As for the number of individuals, which depends on the period in which they are counted, before or after the breeding season, it is estimated between 1,000 and 1,300, “more than all of France.”
Suárez-Quiñones explained that the new decennial census is prepared in accordance with “technical instructions common to all the autonomous communities” and that they were based on the wolf conservation strategy that all the autonomies agreed upon at the time “by consensus” but that the Government of Spain replaced and with which Castilla y León, like the rest of the “autonomous wolf communities” did not support, in what, he points out, is “one of the musts” that the species management policy has. the current Government of Spain.
“This census is a technical work, not a political one, done with absolute rigor and which, therefore, is not debatable from a technical point of view because they have worked with that rigor and that formality to give a result that we expected to publicize”, stressed the counselor who clarified that “herds and non-exemplary” following the state guidelines previously indicated.
José Ángel Arranz has been in charge of offering the main data of the new registry which, he stressed, confirms a “minimum” of 193 herds at present with that growth of 8 percent. “It is very good, excellent data,” he certified to reflect that The reproduction rate stands at 87 percent, which means that, when there is a “healthy and growing population” it expands towards “the edges” and colonizes “Ávila and Segovia provinces fundamentally”
“We are already beginning to have provinces also in the south of the Duero with a density of wolf packs that in some areas we could technically say are even saturated with the number of packs,” said Arranz, who recalls that they have gone from 17 packs to 35 in this area, which already houses 18 percent of the wolves of Castilla y León. “It is a fact that shows the good state of conservation in the community as we have always maintained,” he added.
By provinces
Regarding provincialized data, Ávila has a total of 15 packs, of which it shares one with Madrid and Extremadura and which accounts for 42 percent of the wolves south of the Duero. For its part, Burgos has 18 herds registered, shared with Cantabria, the Basque Country and La Rioja.
“León is the province with the most spectacular results,” Arranz has detailed, with 74 herds, which means that almost four out of every ten live in this area. It shares five with Galicia, one with Galicia-Asturias and León and eight with Asturias. Another of the wolf provinces par excellence is Palencia, 35 flocks and a reproduction rate of 95 percent, the general director continued. Shares three with Cantabria.
Salamanca offers a “lower” density because the pastures are not “an ideal habitat for the wolf as there is no availability of wild food.” He has three packs and shares two with Ávila and Zamora. Segovia has experienced “spectacular growth” since has almost doubled the number of herds in ten years, going from 11 to 20. It shares ‘families’ with Madrid and Castilla-La Mancha.
Soria is another of the provinces, along with Salamanca, with a lower presence of canids and has six herds, of which two are shared with La Rioja and one with Castilla-La Mancha. As for Valladolid, Arranz has highlighted that, although it appears that it is not a “wolf” province, it is home to 22 packs, 22.9 percent of the Duero census.
Finally, Zamora has 22 herds registered, with one exception, that here the data, due to the fires in the Sierra de la Culebra, correspond to the years 23-24. Fire that has affected the habitat, displacing the canids at firstbut which, according to the data of the Board, are returning to recover their territory and in which reproductions have already been verified. It has 46 herds, sharing two with Galicia and six with Portugal.
“All the information given in the census comes from direct observation, They are confirmed herds. That is to say, it is not a census in which we have made a statistical estimate and then apply a mathematical model to it,” the general director clarified, while Suárez-Quiñones explained that work has been done in collaboration with the bordering autonomies to “not cross-reference data “.
Regarding the methodology, David Cubero explained that to carry out the census, more than 20,000 kilometers have been tracked on foot, with almost 3,000 itineraries of more than 7.5 kilometers in distance. In addition, 2,007 phototrapping stations, 290 listening stations and 146 observation stations have been set up, which reflect “the rigor and professionalism” of this study.
The Government’s mistake
Suárez-Quiñones has shown that the census “manifests” the Government’s “error” in ensuring that the conservation status of the wolfhound was “unfavorable” in Spain, something that the autonomous wolf-growing communities and He trusts that the new report that the Central Executive sends to Europe next year will reflect “reality”.
In this sense, he has announced that this week he will call these autonomies where the presence of the wolf is the majority to a meeting that he hopes to have within a period of “15 days” to decide the actions to take to remove the wolf from the List of Wild Species. in Special Protection Regime (Lespre) since, “it does not make any sense from the point of view of the conservation of the species.”
He also hopes to “convince” Europe to put an end to “this population differentiation north and south of the Duero”, something that, he emphasizes, “does not have a scientific basis.” “The scientific-technical basis is that it is a single population and therefore that will also be part of the agenda of the meeting of all the autonomous communities that have a wolf presence,” he added.
The counselor, who predicts a ten percent increase in the number of wolves nationwide, will require recovering the “management” of this species. “We have shown that it was a responsible, sensible, technical management, endorsed by technicians. And, therefore, we will probably agree with the autonomous communities to demand, not ask, the recovery of that management,” he continued.
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