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ARCHIVED - Livestock carcass feasts to be supplied to the flourishing vulture population of Murcia
The number of the scavengers in the Region has more than trebled in 13 years
After a ban lasting many years livestock farmers in the Region of Murcia are now to be allowed to leave the carcasses of dead animals in the open, with certain limitations, thus providing an important supplementary source of food for scavenging birds of prey, particularly griffon vultures.
By 2006 the number of griffon vultures known to be living in four colonies in the Region had dropped to only 185, including 52 mating pairs, having fallen sharply following a ban on leaving dead livestock in the open which was introduced in 2002, at the height of the “mad cow disease” scare. In 2009, when the alarm had passed, the EU passed legislation authorizing the controlled abandonment of the carcasses of domesticated animals, but only now have the specific details of how and where the practice is to be permitted in Murcia been finalized by the regional government.
In the meantime, the vulture population has flourished, with the number of birds having risen to 596 in Murcia (including 204 mating pairs) last year.
There are already two locations in Murcia where additional food supplies are made available to vultures in this way, one owned by the regional government in the Sierra de Mojantes (Caravaca de la Cruz) and the other a privately owned site in Casas Nuevas, in the municipality of Mula, and the new legislation makes it possible to create more if the population grows sufficiently to make it advisable. The obligation to preserve these scavengers is particularly keenly felt in Spain, which is home to over 90 per cent of all vultures living in the wild in Europe.
As is to be expected, the leaving of dead animals in the open air is to be subject to strict rules, but the seven areas specified in Murcia where it is to be allowed are large enough to include parts of 17 municipalities, most of them in the areas where the majority of the Region’s vultures live (there are four colonies in Mojantes, Peña María, Valdeinfierno and Sierra del Tejo, all in the north-west, in Lorca, Caravaca de la Cruz and Moratalla). As a result the birds will be able to legally provide a valuable service by disposing of decomposing meat quickly, cleanly and inexpensively.
First, though, there is yet another bureaucratic hurdle to be overcome: at one point vultures had become so rare in Murcia that they were declared to be extinct in the Region, a declaration which must now be legally reversed: this process could easily take a year.
The specific conditions to be applied are that only the carcasses of sheep and goats belonging to large agricultural concerns are included – cows only in exceptional circumstances – and the practice is to be limited in such a way that farmers continue to use the services of authorized disposal agents and vultures continue to feed mainly off wild animals. Farmers taking part must take a series of steps to avoid risks to public health, requesting authorization and specifying the number of carcasses left out in the open so that the Department of the Environment can ensure that reasonable limits are not exceeded.
In addition, the characteristics of the vultures’ feasting areas are very explicitly defined: they must be at least 200 metres from the nearest livestock feeding area, 100 metres from roads and 500 metres from built-up areas, for example, and carcasses must be deposited in the morning so that the vultures detect them early and take less time to “clean” them. Any uneaten remains must be removed within two weeks.
There is speculation that this move could also favour the reappearance in the region of the rarer bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus), which disappeared from the Region of Murcia in the mid-20th century but in recent years has been successfully reintroduced in the neighbouring provinces of Jaén and Granada and can occasionally be seen flying over the north-west of Murcia and the mountains of Sierra Espuña.
Image 2: a vulture is re-released into the wild following treatment at the wildlife recovery centre in El Valle.
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