The marbled teal recovery plan reaches the milestone of a thousand releases; Las Moreras lagoons (Mazarrón) will receive specimens next year
Ibis, avocets, black-winged stilts, horned coots and martins coexist in an orderly fashion in the lagoons of El Hondo Natural Park (Crevillente and Elche) on a leaden Monday morning at the end of March. The birds are barely disturbed as visitors walk along the wooden walkways, oblivious to the symbolic event that is about to take place: the release of forty marbled teals into the wetland, reaching a milestone in this ambitious recovery strategy. There are already more than a thousand specimens introduced into nature thanks to a Life project that has the purpose of saving the most endangered duck in Europe.
It is not for less: the ‘Marmaronetta angustirostris’ is one of the seven species in critical danger of extinction in Spain – the other six are the rockrose of Cartagena (a plant), the European mink (a mammal), the Cantabrian capercaillie and the the lesser shrike (two other birds), the nacra and the river pearl clam (two molluscs)–.
Small in size, with a fine beak, an ivory color and an elegant profile, with an unmistakable ponytail, the marbled teal is a very special duck: it requires very clean water less than half a meter deep to feed comfortably, and its migration varies depending on of food availability. The degradation of its habitat, together with hunting, have brought it to the brink of extinction.
One of the two acclimatization cages, where marbled teals spend a week before being released in El Hondo. /
The Spanish population is shared with North Africa, where it moves at the end of October or beginning of November. The teals are then distributed throughout Algeria, the Atlantic coast of Morocco and even the interior of the Sahara to return to the peninsula in April, where they are already breeding in May. Their mortality rate is high and for this reason they are great producers of chickens. Nature is wise.
There are only 107 nesting pairs left in Spain, most of them in the Alicante natural area, and the goal is to reach the figure of 125, for which it will be necessary to improve the state of 3,000 hectares of wetlands in its distribution area.
Custody of territory
To reach this goal, a recovery plan coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation (Ministry for Ecological Transition) was launched last year, which has as partners the Departments of the Environment of the Generalitat Valenciana, the Andalusian Government and the Murcia Region. . It has a duration of five years and a budget of 6.3 million, financed for the most part by the European Union.
Tragsatec also participate; the General Directorate of Water of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge; the Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS); SEO/BirdLife; and ANSE. These two conservation organizations have bought two farms in El Hondo totaling 54 hectares (El Espigar I and II) for half a million euros.
Wooden footbridge that facilitates the visit in the Natural Park of El Hondo. /
The CHS is finalizing the acquisition of another 90-hectare property (La Raja), at a cost of 900,000 euros, to integrate the habitat in which 70% of marbled teals breed in Spain into the project. The basin organization will also be in charge of controlling the level of water: both its volume and its physical-chemical state. The water in El Hondo comes from the Segura River and surrounding springs.
The El Hondo wetland in Alicante is the most important breeding area in Spain for this critically endangered duck
The actions in the Region of Murcia will consist of the adaptation of the Moreras de Mazarrón lagoon –an old gravel pit protected as a Wetland of International Importance and Special Protection Area for Birds (ZEPA)–, frequented by the Anatidae more than a year ago. decade and where specimens will be released next year, as confirmed to LA TRUTH on Monday by the project coordinators at an information session that was attended by, among others, the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Elena Pita; the Minister of Ecological Transition of the Generalitat, Mireia Mollá; the head of the CHS Environmental Studies service, Eduardo Lafuente; the delegate in Valencia of SEO/BirdLife, Mario Giménez; and the director of ANSE, Pedro García.
“Saving the marbled teal forces us to work on improving wetlands, the most vulnerable natural spaces that provide us with great ecosystem services, some of them related to the regulation of floods and the mitigation of droughts,” warns Elena Pita . Wetlands are disappearing three times faster than forests.
Land stewardship and captive breeding –in the centers of El Saler (Valencia) and Cañada de los Pájaros (Seville)– are two important supports of a project that also includes environmental restoration actions in the Albufera de Valencia, Doñana, the Marshes of the Guadalquivir (Seville and Huelva) and Punta Entinas-Sabinar (Almería).
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