The Ministry of Ecological Transition, Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning, in collaboration with the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, has concluded the installation of a network of photometers in the Timanfaya National Park that seeks to protect the fauna.
This was reported by the Government of the Canary Islands in a statement in which it explains that the initiative will allow collecting data and measuring light pollution levels in this natural space.
The councilor responsible for the area, José Antonio Valbuena, highlighted that the initiative is part of the Interreg EElabs project, which carries out this type of measurement in protected natural areas of Macaronesia, and that will allow, in the case of Lanzarote, to measure the propagation of artificial night light from urban centers on this protected area, to assess its impact on the species that inhabit it.
In this regard, he stressed that the data collected by this project will be available to the scientific community in a public use portal, generating a laboratory in the natural environment to measure natural darkness in a space surrounded by the municipalities of Yaiza and Tinajo.
The network of photometers installed thanks to this project coordinated by the astronomer of the IAC, Miquel Serra-Ricart, will allow measuring the brightness of the night sky, as well as the changes produced by the polluting lighting of nearby populations, detecting the affectation that may be generated to the numerous species of lichens and plants, insects and birds, among which is one of the most important colonies of Cory's shearwater in the region, with an estimated population of between 1,350 and 1,450 pairs of the Atlantic species.
In the latter case, due to their nocturnal behavior, they are very sensitive to light, especially when young specimens venture out on their first flights, between October and November. On those nights, the lights of the cities attract them, dazzling and disorienting them, causing them to fall to the ground and leaving them vulnerable to their predators.
For his part, the director-conservator of the Timanfaya National Park, Pascual Gil Muñoz, stressed that "in addition to the landscape, geology and biodiversity, this natural space has other less tangible, but no less important, natural resources, such as air and sky quality, darkness and silence."
He also stressed that "during the next few years we want to focus on these resources and monitor them, not only for their influence on the health of species and ecosystems, but also on the people who visit us."
