Dissemination

For yet another year, the LIFE ZEPAURBAN Project received a visit from the external team to supervise the work being undertaken. On the 19th and 20th of March, the third monitoring visit for the LIFE ZEPAURBAN Project took place under the direction of Sara Mora, the individual responsible for the Nemo-Idom team's monitoring of the project.

As part of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN Project, a series of activities have been started designed to disseminate the wealth of the birding community at the urban SPAs of Extremadura, with special attention being paid to the lesser kestrel, as well as to raise awareness among the local population about the need to protect the area as well as about its potential as a tourist resource. These actions revolve around talks and guided tours for schoolchildren, as well as other activities that are open to the rest of the population.

One of the main factors when establishing the protection criteria for a species such as the lesser kestrel is to know, as accurately as possible, where their main feeding areas are and what environmental characteristics those areas possess.

ALGAKON, the company selected for the campaign, is starting work on awareness-raising and information dissemination to the local population and schools within action E7 of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN project. In the framework of this action, external assistance was planned to be contracted to provide talks to primary and secondary schools, as well as to provide guided visits to urban centres, for both school students as well as the local population, to increase awareness about the lesser kestrel..

The FITUR 2019 starts with the presence of our project LIFE-ZEPAURBAN in the official stand of Extremadura promoting the recently created product Urban Birding, whose objective is to promote tourism around birding in urban areas, especially the urban SPAs (Special Protection Areas for birds) in our region.

As part of action A6 nest boxes are being manufactured industrially by the partner Prefabricados Extremadura 2002 and are available for installation in colonies of lesser kestrels.

Once the design phase was over, undertaken primarily by DEMA, testing was carried out in laboratories by INTROMAC, a partner in the LIFE project responsible for new materials as well as in the Church of the Purification in the SPA (Lesser kestrel colonies of Almendralejo”. The nest boxes developed in the framework of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN project are now being produced and are ready for installation. 

The director of the LIFE-ZEPAURBAN project, Atanasio Fernández García, participated, giving a talk “LIFE-ZEPAURBAN:  conservation activities in lesser kestrel colonies in Extremadura” focused on the work underway in the project on buildings of heritage value.

We have explored the background of the word “cernícalo” and the origin of the epithet naumanni, now let us look at why the word “primilla” and other names.

In the middle of June, the release programme of lesser kestrel chicks started, as planned in Action C.3. “Captive-breeding and reinforcement of lesser kestrel colonies at risk of disappearance”.

During the breeding season that has just finished, lesser kestrels that were carrying GPS transmitters have provided a large amount of data.