Conservation

On Thursday 18th March a webinar organised by SEO/Birdlife entitled “The Protection of wild species living in urban environments: the situation, the legal framework, and means of coexistence” will be held with the support of the Regional Ministry of the Environment, Spatial Planning, and Sustainability of the Region of Madrid.

The LIFE-ZEPAURBAN Project will take part with a presentation on the main actions carried out in the lesser kestrel colonies of urban ZEPAs in Extremadura.

The webinar will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel of SEO/BirdLife. 

The International Congress on the Conservation of the Lesser Kestrel, which has been organised as part of action E2 of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN project, will be held between 29th June and 2nd July 2021. Given the current circumstances of Covid-19, the congress will be held online.

of its food, the loss of nesting sites and competition for the same, and disturbance during the breeding season.

Moreover, the chicks suffer a high rate of accidental falls to the ground when they begin to venture outside the nest; as they are not yet able to fly they are easy prey for their predators. They may also be injured or even killed by these falls as some nests are situated at a height of over 75 m; the high temperature inside the nests, competition for the food brought by their parents, and a scarcity of safe places to perch also contribute towards the risk of falls.

In February 2021 we witnessed the arrival of the first lesser kestrel of this season which was captured on film by the camera mounted on the Church of La Purificación, which keeps a watch on the ZEPA known as “Lesser Kestrel Colonies in Almendralejo”. 

This is an emblematic colony of Extremadura located in the first urban ZEPA established in Europe. As you know it is watched over by the DEMA technicians, beneficiary partners of LIFE-ZEPAURBAN, who for the whole of the season will monitor the nests by means of the video surveillance system in real time.

The Life-ZEPAURBAN project hopes to see you at the 2021 virtual International Birdwatching Fair (Feria Internacional de Turismo Ornitológico, 2021); we will be delighted to welcome you to the European project stand of the Tourist Department and the stand of the Regional Ministry for Ecological Transition and Sustainability. There we will be able to give you all the updated information on the project and will present the new material which has been published.

Naturaleza del Sur is installing over 200 nestboxes in urban ZEPAs.

The LIFE-ZEPAURABAN Project has been invited to participate in the Conference on Cultural Heritage Bio-Threats that will be held from November 16 to 18 in San Cristóbal de La Laguna.

Since the first SPA was declared within an urban center in Extremadura in 2004, this pioneering initiative has been widely accepted by different groups such as local and regional governments and conservation NGOs. However, while the network of urban SPAs in Extremadura grew to 19 declared spaces, no other region in the world had declared a building or group of buildings as a protected space because of its biodiversity value.

In the last year of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN project, a complete census of all the urban SPAs that are part of its scope of action is planned. Nevertheless, following the criteria established by the scientific committee for the project (Action F2), in 2020 an attempt was made to count the largest possible number of SPAs in Extremadura in order to have information on population trends.