A few days ago, the Research Group of the Houbara Project belonging to the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) sent a report to the Yaiza City Council warning that the Yaiza Municipal Shooting Range "is being executed within the habitat of the Canary Islands houbara and other threatened bird species, some of them classified as Endangered".
For this reason, the Alcogida Environmental Platform joins the request of the CSIC group and asks the Yaiza City Council "to respect the environmental regulations that protect these species and their habitats, to stop the works and to seek an alternative location."
The Platform points out that "it is a serious irresponsibility that a public institution such as the Yaiza City Council is skipping different regional, national and international laws that protect the species that inhabit the area, even more so when they have been warned by the CSIC that it is a place with species in danger of extinction such as the Canary Islands houbara, the Egyptian vulture, the tagarote falcon or the Canary Islands raven, information collected in the Biodiversity Data Bank of the Government of the Canary Islands and in different reports."
"In addition, the construction of the shooting range would not only involve the occupation and alteration of the habitat of protected species, but its use during different periods of the year would generate a very important disturbance to the species found in its environment, since the noise of the shots would cause the birds to abandon any area adjacent to the shooting range, making the impact of its construction and commissioning encompass a much larger radius."
Finally, Alcogida makes "a call to all administrations to find out about the species that inhabit an area before approving any project within a natural space."
