The Cabildo de Tenerife has collected a total of 3,351 shearwaters that fell in their attempt to lift their first flight to the ocean in the 2021 campaign, which began in mid-October and has now ended. This campaign is coordinated by the Cabildo Wildlife Recovery Center (La Tahonilla) and consists of rescuing juvenile shearwaters injured by disorientation mainly due to light pollution, the island corporation said in a statement this Wednesday.
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During this campaign, 3,351 shearwaters were collected, of which 95.5% (3,200 specimens) were released, the majority in the south of the island. Adeje (1026) and Arona (826) were the municipalities with the highest number of injured birds.
If these data are compared with those of 2018, an increase of 27% in recovered specimens can be seen. This comparison is made based on these two years in particular because the conditions have been similar, highlighting above all “the luminosity of the moon, since if there is a full moon there are fewer accidents because the shearwaters go towards it and not towards the light from the city and if there is a new moon, the opposite happens ”, according to Alejandro Suárez, a veterinarian at the Cabildo Center.
The gray shearwater is a very vulnerable species that presents serious conservation problems due to the fragility of the habitat where they breed and the loss of juvenile specimens when they leave their nests at night on their first flights.
