The Rancher’s House hosted today, Wednesday, the presentation of the Canine Unit of the Cabildo de Tenerife, made up of two Belgian Malinois shepherds, Teno and Jama, who will be in charge of identifying poisons deposited in the island’s protected natural areas, as well as carcasses of animals killed by the ingestion of toxins, with the help of the body of Environmental Agents of the Cabildo.
In this way, a recurring problem that affects wildlife by being contaminated by these products and affected, in many cases to death, will be solved.
The president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, explained in the presentation that a very important area in the natural environment is to identify animals found in natural spaces that appear dead from ingesting poisons, and indicated that with the implementation of the Canine Unit wants to help protect the fauna from a problem little known by the population, which is that of poisons in the territory.
For this reason, Pedro Martín stressed that the activation of this Canine Unit “will help to conserve Tenerife’s wild species as important as crows, guinchos or owls, among many others, and will favor the prevention and proper use of toxic products in the natural environment.
The Minister of Natural Environment Management, Isabel García, pointed out that recent studies carried out through the Health Surveillance Network of the Government of the Canary Islands suggest that most of the species of wild birds treated at the Center for the Recovery of Wild Fauna of the Cabildo de Tenerife had traces of toxic substances in their bodies such as the usual poisons for rats and mice and pesticides, and among them many that are in danger of extinction, lamenting the presence of endangered species killed by toxic substances already prohibited .
The two dogs that make up this Canine Unit together with their guide carried out a demonstration based on the location of the corpse of a bird and proceeded to the execution protocol for the identification and collection of the same carried out by the Environmental agents.
