The battle for survival
IT often seems to be an uphill struggle for wildlife, for many reasons, as typified by the recent spate of fires – many of them, disgracefully, caused deliberately – right where the tiny population of brown bears fights for survival, in Asturias and Castilla y Leon.
The mammals face enough problems as it is, with climate change a principal one.
Bears are omnivorous, but if deprived of important food sources such as chestnuts, cherries, beech mast and berries, their survival is placed at risk.
There are less than 400 animals in the Cantabrian population, so any losses are difficult to sustain.
Local conservation organisations are involved in various projects to assist the bears.
Next door to Asturias, in Galicia, a project to construct a major system of windfarms is viewed as a serious threat to the population of golden eagles – soaring birds always being in danger from the great blades.
In February 2022, a young Spanish imperial eagle was brought to the hospital de fauna salvaje de Amus, at Villafranca de los Barros, Badajoz, with gunshot wounds, and had various lead shot removed from its body before being released, fully recovered, in July, fitted with a radio transmitter.
During the following winter transmission failed, and the bird was found dead from electrocution – another victim of the vast network of cables and pylons covering the country.
Now a little history: Spain was the last country to have banned the hunting of the world’s largest animal, the blue whale – that was more than forty years ago – and the population of the giant mammal is now reported to be slowly increasing, so that hopefully it will regain its original status, and become a more regular sight off our shores.
The conservation organisation ANSE is opposing a scheme in the region of Murcia to construct a ‘campingresort’ – which it regards as a ‘cover-up’ for an urbanisation, on the coast near Águilas, where few areas of unspoiled coast still remain.