The gray teal is easily recognizable: she is small, with a dark eye contour and a characteristic pigtail. It could be one more duck, like those that inhabit lakes in many parts of our country. It could be if it weren’t the duck most threatened in Europe and that only breeds in our country.
Now, a Spanish initiative financed with European funds aims to remove the gray teal from the list of seven species in critical condition of our country. The progressive disappearance of wetlands, their breeding area, has caused the population to decrease little by little.
Because until the middle of the last century, the gray teal was abundant in the most humid areas of our country. The marshes of the Guadalquivir or El Hondo, in the Salinas de Santa Pola concentrate a large part of the species.
But climate change has taken its toll and now the breeding pairs have plummeted. According to the last count, there are 87 breeding pairs In our country. The figure is positive compared to previous years, but still lower than the full sustainability of the species.
Captive breeding and land reclamation
The LIFE + Pardilla Teal, awarded in the 2019 call for this European program, investigates the specificities of this duck and is also dedicated to breeding them in captivity. It is, for example, what they do at the La Granja de El Saler Center, in Valencia.
“We work with specimens that are already born in captivity and we accustom them to ourselves,” Juan Antonio Gómez López, head of Wildlife of the Department of Agriculture and Ecological Transition of the Valencian Government, explains in conversation with laSexta.
In this center they take care of the ducklings in a protected environment where they are then paired, with the aim of releasing them later in their natural surroundings and already prepared to face wildlife.
The other leg of the project seeks to conserve its habitat, the wetlands, recovering 3,000 hectares of land so that they can reproduce in freedom and in an environment adapted to their needs.
Cultivation and invasive species
“Today, there are fewer and fewer wetlands: they dry out to put them in cultivation, invasive species appear …”, lists Marcos Fernández, a worker at the Santa Faz fauna recovery center in Alicante.
The center is located near the El Hondo Natural Park, one of the main locations for the gray teal. In September they were released 40 specimens of this migratory duck and, precisely to know their customs and if they carry out their migratory flights, they have been marked that they follow their routes. Your main destination: North Africa.
“Eight specimens have crossed to North Africa, but only one of them has managed to complete the route and return to Spain”, certifies the professor of the area of Ecology at the Miguel Hernández University, Francisco Botella.
This project, which coordinates the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, has a budget of 6.3 million euros for its development between January of this year and December 2025. Of this amount, 4.7 million come directly from European funds.
The LIFE Cerceta Pardilla was one of the three projects aimed at protecting biodiversity in our country approved in the 2019 call for the program. Two others were intended to protect the brown bone and the Iberian lynx. On the map below these lines you can find more information about the other two projects and their location.
The LIFE projects They have a specific budget of the European Union to fight for environmental protection and against climate change since 1992. Their ‘technical’ name is Environment and Climate Action Program. It is the only fund dedicated entirely to environmental and climate objectives. This includes everything from protecting biodiversity to advancing the transition to cleaner energy sources or fighting the climate emergency.
In total, since its launch almost two decades ago, more than 4,500 projects have been co-financed. This has meant mobilizing investments worth 9,000 million euros and has contributed more than 4,000 million euros to the protection of the environment and the climate.
Spain has been one of the great beneficiaries of these European funds since in our country they have been deployed 893 LIFE projects, almost a fifth of all financed projects. In total they have invested 1,555 million euros, of which 781 million have come directly from the European Accounts.
That Spain is a great recipient of LIFE funds is partly explained because it is the EU country with the largest protected land area: 138,000 km2 in 2018. Almost 30% of this territory is integrated into the so-called Natura 2000 network, a European ecological network of areas for the conservation of biodiversity.
In addition, on the peninsula there are more than 600 wild species under special protection regime, 198 in danger of extinction and 139 in a vulnerable situation, which also justifies that Spain has been the recipient of a large part of European investment.
Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
