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ENVIRONMENT

Spain sounds alarm over bird deaths caused by padel courts

Animal rights groups and prosecutors in Spain are sounding the alarm over a large number of birds killed by flying into the glassed-walled padel courts, a hugely popular racquet sport in the country.

Published: 24 November 2023 15:32 CET
Spain sounds alarm over bird deaths caused by padel courts
Animal rights activists have filed several lawsuits in recent years in Spanish courts about the problem. Photo: Tomasz Krawczyk/Unsplash

The fast-paced game, a mixture of tennis and squash, is played in teams of two on a court that is typically surrounded by glass walls which players can bounce balls off.

Spanish conservation group SEO/Birdlife is warning in a recently launched public awareness campaign that padel courts, like all glass structures, are a “barrier that birds do not identify as a threat” despite their highly developed sight.

As a result, birds regularly collide with the court walls, it added.

The group said it regularly finds dead swallows, blackbirds and warblers at the foot of padel courts.

The problem mainly affects young birds and is “exacerbated during migration periods” — especially since padel courts are often built on the outskirts of towns and villages where there is more wildlife.

Animal rights activists have filed several lawsuits in recent years in Spanish courts about the problem, leading the public prosecutor’s office to see if the padel courts are in breach of a new animal welfare law which took effect in Spain in September.

This law considers the mistreatment of animals to be a criminal offence, the office said in a letter sent on Monday to regional public prosecutors’ offices across Spain.

The letter urged regional public prosecutors to make sure the “competent authorities” adopt “all the necessary measures” to avoid bird collisions with padel court walls.

Among the solutions proposed by animal rights associations is placing stickers or nets on the transparent glass walls to make them more visible, a technique that was successfully tested in the eastern region of Valencia, according to SEO/Birdlife.

Created in the late 1960s in Mexico, padel is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world today.

Spain is considered the home of professional padel and some four million people, or roughly ten percent of the population, play the sport.

The country is home to 15,300 padel courts, out of a worldwide total of 40,000, according to consultancy firm Deloitte.

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ENVIRONMENT

Spain’s endangered Iberian lynx population doubles in three years

The number of endangered Iberian lynx in the wild in Spain and Portugal has nearly doubled since 2020 to surpass 2,000 last year, the Spanish government said Friday.

Published: 17 May 2024 13:01 CEST
Spain's endangered Iberian lynx population doubles in three years

A total of 722 lynx were born in 2023 bringing their total number in the two countries to 2,021, a record high since monitoring of the species began and up from 1,111 just three years earlier, Spain’s environment ministry said in a statement.

This rise “allows us to continue to be optimistic about the reduction of the risk of extinction of the Iberian lynx,” it added.

Known for its pointy ears, long legs and leopard-like spotted fur, the species was on the brink of extinction just two decades ago due to poaching, road accidents and encroachment on their habitat by urban development, as well as a dramatic decline due to disease in wild rabbits numbers, the lynx’s main prey.

When the first census of the spotted nocturnal cat was carried out in 2002, there were fewer than 100 specimens in the Iberian Peninsula.

The ministry party attributed the boom in lynx numbers to the success of a captive breeding and reintroduction programme launched in 2011. Since then, 372 lynx born in captivity have been released into the wild.

“The recovery of the Iberian lynx population in Spain and Portugal constitutes one of the best examples of conservation actions for endangered species in the world,” it said.

The ministry said the Iberian lynx population has continued to rise since 2015, when the International Union for Conservation of Nature downgraded the threat level to “endangered” from “critically endangered — its highest category before extinction in the wild.

Most Iberian lynx can be found in the Donana national park and Sierra Morena mountains in the southwestern region of Andalusia, but the conservation programme has reintroduced captive-bred animals to the Spanish regions of Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura and Murcia, as well as Portugal.

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