If the passerby looks up these days towards the tops of the trees that line the Ramírez Cerdá park, they will miss the "tenants" who used its branches to make them their home. And it is that for 15 days the herons that have been part of the decoration of the Arrecife park for years, are moving. Rather, they are being moved after, less than a month ago, a health report was made public that warned of the serious risk to public health that the massive presence of these birds caused due to the presence of harmful bacteria for humans, such as salmonella.
And if the passerby turns 180 degrees with their gaze and places it on the tiles of the central park, it does not take long to verify that the remains of excrement and feathers of these birds turn the path through this place designed for leisure into a gymkhana. But that situation seems that it will not happen again because the park is sealed for disinfection.
The Environment area of the Cabildo has been moving the herons to a new location for a few days, near the headquarters of the First Institution, so that the Arrecife City Council is in charge of disinfecting and cleaning the park. "We hope that in a month we will have the park without herons and clean", declared the Councilor for Gardens and Cleaning, Ubaldo Becerra, this Monday.
As explained by the Environment area, the procedure that the Cabildo is carrying out to transfer the herons involves first capturing between 10 and 15 specimens, for which they are using falconers, and then transferring them to a new wooded location next to the Cabildo, in order to serve as a claim to the rest of the heron population, which little by little will be nesting and raising chicks in their new "home", causing less inconvenience than in a park as busy as Ramírez Cerdá. It is a slow process in which the birds have to change their habits and their usual place of "residence".
According to the councilor, this Monday the tops of the trees were already "very clean", so the City Council is already in charge of the disinfection and cleaning tasks of the park. "We are waiting to receive the nets to cover the trees to prevent them from returning", explained the councilor, who has requested the Government of the Canary Islands for an "urgent subsidy", granted by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Tourism for a value of 58,000 euros to proceed, through a private company, first to the disinfection of all types of bacteria caused by bird droppings and secondly, to carry out an ecological cleaning, as Becerra explained, based on ground walnut shells, quartz and millet so as not to damage the park tiles.
In recent years, the overpopulation of this species in the park has caused problems such as bad odors and remains of excrement that prevented even sitting on the park benches, in addition to giving a dirty and neglected appearance to the area.
