The Government Council of the Canary Islands has approved this Thursday the decree that modifies the protection category of the guincho (Pandion haliaetus) within the Canary Islands Catalog of Protected Species, in order to include it as an endangered species.
In this way, the decree, approved after the mandatory report from the Canary Islands Advisory Council, is motivated by the decline in the population of that bird, which in the last decade has been reduced by up to 50% in the Archipelago.
Currently, only seven territorial pairs are recorded observed between Tenerife, La Gomera and islets north of Lanzarote. Added to this low number of specimens is the high mortality rate of the youngest.
For its part, the regulations, whose scope of application is the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands, pursues the reclassification of the guincho, adapting its protection category, within the framework of the aforementioned Canary Islands Catalog of Protected Species, in order to promote protection by environmental regulations according to the current state of its population in the Archipelago.
In this sense, the decree provides for the change of category of this species from vulnerable to endangered.
The approval of this category modification implies the adoption, within a maximum period of three years, of a species recovery plan, which will include the most appropriate measures for the fulfillment of the objectives sought and the designation of critical areas.
In critical areas and in areas of potential reintroduction or expansion of these taxa or populations, conservation measures and specific management instruments will be established for these areas or integrated into other plans that avoid negative effects on the species that have motivated the designation of those areas.
Finally, the main factors that have led to this population decline of the guincho are, among others, disturbances in the breeding areas caused by recreational boats and jet skis, as well as fishing from the shore in enclaves close to the nests.