The president of the Cabildo, Pedro San Ginés, has used his Facebook account to respond to the complaint filed this week with the Civil Guard by the ecological association SEO/BirdLife, which accuses the Island Corporation and the public company Tragsa of having "destroyed" a colony of protected birds in Arrecife, felling trees that housed occupied nests in the middle of the breeding season.
"I seemed to read that the Cabildo had 'exterminated, destroyed' or something like that, the colony of herons and egrets in the park next to the Cabildo, and that it would have been lost and the surviving specimens emigrated to another place. I don't know if there is anything that has not been done correctly, because it is always possible and everything can be done better, but yesterday afternoon there was no room for more herons in that park, only that now it is cleaner", says the president on his Facebook account.
In reality, the SEO/BirdLife complaint -which did not mention that the birds had "emigrated"- focused on the destruction of nests, eggs and chicks and pointed to the commission of a possible crime, stressing that the Penal Code contemplates penalties of six months to two years of prison or a fine of eight to twenty-four months for the destruction of protected species of wild fauna or for having prevented or hindered their reproduction.
Although the Cabildo has not responded publicly to this complaint, San Ginés has done so on social networks by publishing three photos where adult herons can be seen in the vicinity of that park. "These beautiful birds -I love them- the truth is that they cost the people of Lanzarote years of unsanitary conditions in the Ramirez Cerdá park, and finally the felling of the largest trees in the city, in addition to the habilitation of this new space for them. I say this because of the criticism of how wild and insensitive we have been with them", concludes the president on Facebook.
In its complaint, SEO/BirdLife recalled that the cattle egret and the little egret are protected by both Spanish laws for the protection of threatened birds and European regulations. In addition, it stressed that the one in Arrecife is "the only colony of these species in the Canary Islands".
Regarding the accumulated dirt in the park, the association precisely criticized the lack of maintenance of the area. "Specific and regular actions every year, both cleaning and maintenance of the area where the colony is located, carried out always in periods that did not coincide with the nesting of the birds, would have avoided this current situation of dirt and bad smell", he said in the statement with which he made his complaint public.