The SEO/BirdLife organization has appeared as a popular accusation in the proceedings opened in the Court of Instruction Number 1 of Arrecife against three people who were arrested last September by Seprona agents, after being caught hunting shearwaters on the coast of Lanzarote.
It was a member of SEO/BirdLife who observed that several people were looking in several holes and cracks in the coastal area of Charco del Palo, which is why he notified the Seprona of the Civil Guard, who surprised three people - one of them a minor - with a ferret and a sack containing four corpses of young specimens of Canarian Cory's shearwater, recognizing these three residents of Tinajo that they were hunting shearwaters.
SEO/BirdLife has explained that the objective of appearing is to obtain a sentence to reflect the legal consequences of illegal hunting of protected species, as well as their nests, and to dissuade their commission, since they specify that this is one of the specific objectives of the LIFE Guardians of Nature project to "improve the effectiveness of actions aimed at combating environmental crimes".
The NGO recalls that together with other Canarian associations, they have been denouncing for several years the illegal hunting of this species included in the Spanish Catalog of Threatened Species with the category of Vulnerable. In addition, it is protected by the Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (Bern Convention), which includes it in its Annex II, dedicated to strictly protected fauna species.
In this sense, they point out that the plundering of Cory's shearwater nests has been a "very common" practice in the Canary Islands, where the meat of the chicks was "highly appreciated for its large amount of fat and for being an easily accessible food resource in times of scarcity".
Finally, they indicate that the appearance is made within the framework of the LIFE Guardians of Nature against Environmental Crime project, financed by the LIFE program of the European Union. This project aims to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of actions aimed at combating crimes against nature.
This project is coordinated by SEO/BirdLife and has the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Sustainable Development of the Junta de Andalucía, the Sociedade Portuguesa para o Estudo das Aves (SPEA), and the nature protection service of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard (Seprona), as beneficiary partners.
The co-financiers are the General Directorate of Nature Protection of the Government of the Canary Islands, the Ministry of Agriculture, Environment, Climate Change and Rural Development of the Generalitat Valenciana and the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (MITERD).
