SEO / BirdLife reports this Thursday that 3,353 ashen shearwaters have been rescued this fall in Tenerife after falling to the ground victims of light pollution and of these, 3,207 could be released.
This year’s awareness campaign – ‘Turn off the light on its first flight’ – has presented record figures and counted on the involvement of thirteen actors and actresses from the television series ‘Hierro’, who requested the collaboration of citizens and institutions through a video.
Thus, between October 10 and November 15, SEO / BirdLife has had a team made up of eight volunteers on duty who have received alert calls and carried out surveillance patrols in areas of maximum incidence.
The field of action has been the municipalities of Santa Cruz, La Laguna, Güimar, Candelaria and El Rosario, where they were able to rescue about 435 shearwaters, 25 of which finally died.
The days with the highest accidents were November 2, 3, 4 and 5.
In those days, the actors Norberto Trujillo, Isaac Do Santos, Maykol Hernández and Saulo Trujillo participated in turn in the release of a hundred shearwaters supporting the SEO / BirdLife team.
In the rest of the island, the towns with the highest activity have been Adeje and Arona, with 55.3% of the total number of injured shearwaters falling.
The specimens returned to the natural environment were collected by personnel from the La Tahonilla Fauna Recovery Centers, in Tenerife, and Tafira, in Gran Canaria, each dependent on the Island Council, once they were evaluated by the veterinarians and verified that they were fit to be released.
All this has been possible, thanks to the citizen collaboration that alerted, through 112 or 900 28 22 28 (for Tenerife), of the discovery of injured specimens so that they could be rescued.
For Elena Ramos, technician of the Canary Islands delegation of SEO / BirdLife, “it is time to unify efforts between the competent administrations, the companies that occupy the coast of the islands, citizens and conservation organizations such as SEO / BirdLife, to reverse the consequences caused by light pollution on the fauna of the islands, making the Canarian sky a safe space for these tireless travelers who faithfully return to their breeding areas in the archipelago every year ”.
The data from the rest of the islands are in the period of analysis, and the results must be evaluated with caution because, to the total sum of rescued animals, the number of victims who are not found, or who fall in difficult areas should be added. access, and they cannot be rescued by the operations of the wildlife recovery centers or volunteers, he says in a note.
THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS EVERY YEAR
Outdoor lights affect thousands of specimens of seabirds. Every year, many chickens of these birds are attracted by artificial lights with which they collide in a considerable percentage and end up colliding and falling, being exposed to new threats such as being run over or predation.
This is a massive phenomenon faced by the island councils that coordinate rescue campaigns, in all the islands, coinciding with the first flight of the Cinderella shearwater chicks to the sea, something that occurs every year towards the end of October and beginnings of November.
In these campaigns, specimens of the Cinderella shearwater are mainly rescued, but also other species such as the Bulwer’s petrel or the small and pichonet shearwaters.
SEO / BirdLife has also sent letters to the administration in which it has requested its firm commitment to keep the public lighting off in the areas considered black spots, due to the highest number of falls or for a reduction of the luminaire during the most sensitive period and that they integrate the objective of changing the municipal lighting into their agendas.
Likewise, citizens help with a gesture as simple as turning off or reducing the exterior light of the houses.
The series ‘Hierro’ showed through spectacular images the peculiar geography of the island and also let viewers listen to the singular and disconcerting “guaña, guaña” emitted by one of the flagship species, the Canary Cinderella shearwater.
That is why SEO / BirdLife has sought on this occasion the involvement of its actors and actresses when launching a campaign for which it has also requested collaboration from individuals, administrations, companies or other groups.
This affects ten species of seabirds from the Canary Islands, Azores and Madeira, birds somewhat unknown to the general population because they spend most of the year on the high seas, only going ashore during the breeding season, which they develop in the interior of dark huras.
The actors are Maykol Hernández, Norberto Trujillo, Miguel Mota, Ana Míguez, Saulo Trujillo, Isaac Bernard, Enrique Alcides, Mingo Ávila, Jesús Antonio Guedella, Ciro Miró, Marga Arnau, Mari Carmen Sánchez and Vicente Ayala.
INSUFFICIENT REGULATION
In addition, SEO / BirdLife has recently submitted allegations to the Royal Decree that approves the ‘Regulation of energy saving and efficiency and reduction of light pollution’ in outdoor lighting installations and its complementary instructions within the public consultation procedure launched by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism.
The organization considers that it does not establish the sufficient and necessary framework for it to be compatible with the conservation of biodiversity and the health of human beings.
The text presented is full of exceptions that give the opportunity to bypass the limitations imposed in terms of lighting arbitrarily.
SEO / BirdLife emphasizes that the standard does not refer to the response curves that living beings present at the different wavelengths that make up light.
