Sylvia undata Š Quique Marcelo
GENERAL RESULTS
GENERAL RESULTS It has not been possible to halt the loss of biodiversity during the last decade.
I
n the time that has elapsed since the publication of the most recent Red Book of Birds of Spain (2004), the vast majority of the species that were regarded as threatened continue to be so, and other species have become threatened or show disturbing negative trends. Some 23% of bird species with regular presence in Spain are at a high risk of extinction. A further 23% of common birds register a negative trend, and 74% of the Important Bird Areas (IBAs) show an unfavourable trend or are in an unfavourable conservation state. Therefore, it is clear that Spain, along with the other European Union countries, has not fulfilled the target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010. This situation is the result of a combination of circumstances, which can be summarised as the lack of enforcement of existing laws and the delay in the development and implementation of the various strategies and plans to conserve species and protected areas. In Europe and in Spain the legislation is frankly very good (for example, the Birds and Habitats Directives, Law 4/1989, now replaced by the Law 42/2007, etc.), and it should allow us to improve significantly the situation of our bird species, which are still facing many threats. For instance, the destruction of habitats affects all of the threatened species and for 80% of them this threat is of high importance, according to the latest Red Book.
Currently, the Spanish bird fauna comprises 439 species that breed or winter in or migrate regularly across our country, although there are records of more than 500 species. Of these, 156 are listed in some of the categories of threatened species established by IUCN in the latest Red Book of Birds of Spain (2004). In 2010, in addition to the available data for the assessment made in the Red Book, information has been updated on 181 taxa through specific coordinated censuses or population estimates, and population trends are available for 142 species recorded in the common bird monitoring programme.
8 CONSERVATION STATUS OF BIRD IN SPAIN IN 2010
The indicators obtained through the study of birds must be a fundamental part of the monitoring system for the new post-2010 Biodiversity Target, which will be defined at European level during the Spanish Presidency of the EU (first half of 2010) and approved at the 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (October 2010 in Nagoya, Japan).
