Murcia, June 6 (EFE) , which favors its recovery”, according to what the coordinator of the Life Cerceta Pardilla project in the Region of Murcia, Esther Cerezo, told EFE.
This project has the objective of improving the conservation status of 3,000 hectares of wetlands in the Iberian Peninsula to reverse the risk of extinction of this species of duck that is in critical danger of extinction and is the most threatened in Europe and whose number of breeding pairs fluctuates between 25 and 120 in Spain.
It has a budget of 6.3 million euros, of which 4.7 come from European funds and the rest from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.
The Mazarrón wetland is in a strategic place for its recovery, between the El Hondo Natural Park (Elche), where a large part of the breeding population is found, and the Guadalquivir marshes, in the provinces of Seville, Huelva and Cádiz, and is the only area where the marbled teal has reproduced recently, in 2007 and 2008.
For the introduction of this species of duck in the wetland of the Rambla de Las Moreras, 95 tons of rubble were removed, 550 square meters (m2) were planted with native vegetation, the old fence was fixed in a section of 150 meters in order to to regulate access in the northeast area of the old gravel pit and a stretch of shore was conditioned after clearing 1,500 m2 of the reedbed to favor the heterogeneity of habitats.
Thus, environmental agents and members of the Association of Naturalists of the Southeast watched over and fed them before installing camera traps for their monitoring and two boxes to promote the formation of pairs and the nesting this spring of 20 specimens of marbled teal, which in Spain It was declared in 2018 in critical danger of extinction as there were only 100 pairs.
In this line, the Minister of the Environment, Mar Menor, Universities and Research, Juan María Vázquez, has argued that the objective is to “try to reverse this threat situation, with the Life Cerceta Pardilla project until 2025, which includes 22 actions in seven of the thirteen critical sites where 83 percent of the breeding pairs are located.
Thus, this Tuesday the third follow-up visit to Life Cerceta Pardilla took place, in which technicians from the Valencian Community, Andalusia and the Region of Murcia have participated, as well as the representative of the European Commission, who has visited the Mazarrón lagoon to audit the recovery work being done on it.
The marbled teal became extinct in the Murcian community in the 20th century and is considered a desert species since it needs wetlands with little water, around half a meter deep, since it is not a species of diving duck, hence it is a common species in countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.