Historical minimum of birds in Doñana due to lack of water

Biodiversity in Doñana continues downhill and without brakes. Wintering birds, a symbol of the reserve's status, have fallen this January to their historic low: only 120,649 specimens, less than half the number a year ago, according to the count of scientists at the Doñana Biological Station. “The data is terrible,” warns Javier Bustamante, vice director of this CSIC research center that studies Doñana. The number of wintering birds is dramatic compared to a year ago, when 289,999 specimens were counted. Now only 44% of the total from a year ago stop in these Andalusian wetlands on their way to Africa and 18% of the 670,309 birds that did so in 2017, when the lagoons were in their splendor.

The decline of the species has been multiplied by the cocktail that hit the reserve during 2023: drought, high temperatures and illegal water extractions from intensive agriculture and legal ones from tourism. Last year the park suffered its highest average annual temperature in the historical series, with 19.3 degrees and 14 days at more than 40 degrees, and this heat and the lack of rain have caused a drop in the number of wintering waterfowl, amphibians and fish due to the low level of flooding in the wetlands of the national park.

The balance of biodiversity offered this Thursday by the Doñana Biological Station CSIC reflects a general deterioration in which fauna and flora deteriorate at high speed because water is scarce on the surface, given that in the subsoil the aquifer remains overexploited and at its worst historical level. The wintering birds sighted are at their “historic minimum” and the greylag goose, for example, had its lowest number recorded so far, with 4,216 specimens.

“We suffered a very intense and prolonged drought. We observe very intense changes in ecosystems and populations. The interpretation and impact of these changes, caused by man and climate change, will have to be in the medium term, but it will come,” warned the director of the Biological Station, Eloy Revilla. Yesterday WWF (World Wildlife Fund) raised the level of the problem and warned that the reserve is suffering “a collapse”, after presenting a report reviewing more than 200 investigations carried out together with 26 scientistsin which they conclude that Doñana is dangerously approaching “a point of no return”. The La Rocina stream, one of the main sources of water in the park, has decreased by more than 60% compared to its former flow. and 14 bodies of water are in poor chemical condition, according to the Guadalquivir Hydrological Plan.

Two months ago Doñana was expelled from the green list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the largest environmental organization in the world, and now the question is whether it will lose more environmental quality seals, given that its ecological decline is worsens due to lack of rain. The reserve has accumulated 13 winters without a wet year and is suffering the longest drought since 1970, with 10 of the 16 sectors in an alarm situation. In 2023, only 323 liters per square meter fell, when the historical average is 523, and this shortage directly affects the fauna and flora, whose life is limited without water, essential for life to sprout in Doñana.

Meanwhile, the illegal wells to irrigate strawberries in the park's surroundings continue and the plan of the Government and the Andalusian Junta to reduce illegal greenhouses must still be finalized throughout this year, so its practical effects and benefits on the aquifer still exist. They will take time to set.

“The technical stoppage of the green seal is bad news, it means that we have not done things well from management and investigation. It should help us learn, to have the list of points to improve. Now the challenge is for this governance to translate into improving the state of the park,” said Revilla.

Bustamante has summarized the declining panorama of biodiversity: “Doñana was always a paradise, but now 68% of the species have a negative population trend, a decline that increases to 79% if the last decade is taken.”

The data collected by the scientists reveal a high mortality of ancient pines and cork oaks with a “decline” of the black forest, the wave of scrub in the wettest area of ​​the sandy mantle of the park. Among carnivores, the fox continues to be the most abundant and the rabbit continues to have “very low” populations. Only the population of deer and wild boar has been increasing since 2006. In raptors, the red kite and the peregrine falcon have a decreasing population trend, with 120 individuals in 2023, and no reproduction has been detected in the western marsh harrier. Finally, almost all amphibian species show downward trends since 2019, although 10 of the 11 species present in Doñana have been detected in 2023.

The worst news is that this decline in biodiversity is far from turning around in the short term because the forecasts for meteorological experts for Andalusia do not predict heavy rains for this spring. And meanwhile, the illegal irrigation that depletes the aquifer continues.

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