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The White Stork is catalogued as Rare in the Catalogue of Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna of the Basque Country. This is because the population of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country has gone down in an alarming way since fifties of past century, reaching a critical situation at the end of seventies, when a nest located in Gamarra (Vitoria-Gasteiz) was the only one that was occupied in all our region. In 1989 begins a slow recovery process, and consequently more than a hundred pairs of Storks nest in the Basque Country, most of them in Alava. Nevertheless, their presence in the Atlantic watershed continue being quite reduced, being limited to Biscay, although in 2013 has increased to 17 pairs. For the first time in decades of absence, the White Stork has nested again in Orduña in 1991 and in Durango in 2001. The development of the recovery project in the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve in the period 2005-2008 has contributed in a meaningful way to strengthen this budding population, benefiting the colonization of several places. A pair nests uninterruptedly in Urdaibai since 2007, and a new pair joined them last year.
The White Stork builds very big nests, usually reaching 1,5 meters of diameter and 1 meter high. However, as every year they add new material, nests can reach 2 m high and weight 400 kg. Therefore, the nest can endanger the integrity of buildings or the structures where they are located. They often build the nest on phone towers, that currently are the highest points of our villages and they can cause technical problems to telephone companies.
The removal of these problematic nests after breeding period, reduce somehow the damage and risks for people and properties. But this is a provisional measure as White Stork is a very long-lived bird characterized also by a big loyalty to its nest.
In some cases the nesting can be avoided by installing elements that complicates to Storks the construction. However, in most cases this option is not effective because Storks are very stubborn and skilful to reconstruct nests even in the worst situations. In this circumstances, the resettlement of nests is the option most likely to succeed. Besides, as the couple that has been removed will continue defending its old nest, will avoid the occupation by another pair. On the other hand, as the usual location of the new nest is a public park, the removal approaches Storks to citizens, which is an attraction and a good tool for environmental education.
This spring, at the request of the Town Hall of the village, the Environmental Department of the Government of Bizkaia has carried out a relocation of the nest that Storks had in a cell tower in Plentzia since 2010. The removal was coordinated by Aitor Galarza, forester and ringer of Aranzadi Society of Sciences, and count on the help of other foresters, volunteers and employees of the telephone company. The three chicks were moved from the top of the antenna to a platform previously built by workers of the Town Hall, located at about 150 meters on a municipal land. It was taken advantage of it also to ring the specimens with metallic rings of Aranzadi Society of Sciences, and also with coloured rings (black with two digits and plain yellow) in order to identify the specimens from a distance. The ringing is an essential tool to carry out the tracking of Stork's population. Thanks to this technique are acquired knowledge relating to their flyways and wintering areas, return rates to their breeding areas, mortality... For example, thanks to ringing we know that the father of these Storks born in 2007, being the first Stork that was born in Urdaibai after the recovery project carried out in the Reserve.
Everything was carried out without problems and parents accepted the new location in few hours, feedings their chicks and improving the nest providing new material. More details about the operation can be watched in this interview to Aitor Galarza in ETB:
http://www.eitb.com/es/videos/detalle/1365610/video-se-hace-traslado-nido-cigueenas-plentzia/ |
