The research group on Ecology and Conservation of Birds of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has denounced the works of the shooting range in Yaiza before the Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA).
The scientists presented the environmental impact assessment on the impact of the municipal shooting range on the habitat of the houbara bustard to the Yaiza City Council on March 6. A month later, without the city council having offered a response to the scientists or stopped the works, the CSIC has decided to go one step further.
The report "The population of houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata fuertaventurae) in the surroundings of La Degollada. Evaluation of the impact of the Yaiza Municipal Shooting Range project Exp. 130/2021 on its habitat." has now been presented as a complaint to the environmental protection agency. It alerts the council that the Yaiza Shooting Range project has an impact on this species, which is listed as endangered in the Spanish Catalogue of Endangered Species.
As the CSIC has announced in a press release, the scientists have found that this area is used by "several specimens" of this species. This has been corroborated through censuses of individuals marked with GPS. In addition, this space is used for nesting and breeding of the houbara.
In addition to the houbara, the report prepared by the CSIC warns the Yaiza City Council that the field would affect a total of 13 species of birds. Among them, some threatened and listed as endangered. In these cases we find the Eleonora's falcon, the Canarian owl, the Egyptian vulture, the Barbary falcon or the Canarian raven.
Alberto Ucero, a member of the CSIC Research Group, recalls that "there are numerous regional, national and international laws that prohibit the alteration or degradation of the habitat of species included in the List of Wild Species under Special Protection". Among the regulations mentioned by Ucero is Law 42/2007 on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, which in its article 54.1 protects in a special way those animals, including eggs and young, the space in which they nest and their breeding areas.
In addition, Ucero points out the European regulations, Directive 79/409/CE, which states that "appropriate and necessary legislative and regulatory measures shall be adopted to ensure the particular conservation of wild fauna species". It also stresses the protection of their habitat and the prohibition of damaging or destroying breeding or resting places.
