Date Published: 11/05/2021
ARCHIVED - Enough is enough. Madrid initiates plan to eradicate invasive street parakeets
ARCHIVED ARTICLE Tourists in Spanish cities are charmed by the colourful, chattering birds, but residents are fed-up with the noise and mess they create
The Argentine parakeet (also known as the monk parakeet) reached Spain in the 70’s and has become a big problem in urban populations, attracting criticism and complaints from residents, who are fed-up with the mess they make, and the constant noise from large colonies of birds.
The parakeets first came to Spain as private pets, but some were abandoned, others escaped and gradually the numbers in major urban areas increased substantially, the birds building huge nests in the tall palm trees frequently found in urban cities, the abundance of food and perfect Spanish climate allowing their populations to flourish.
The rising number of wild parakeets has led to an increasing number of complaints from residents. From January 1 2018 to the end of March this year around 1,139 complaints were registered in Madrid alone, mainly relating to their huge nests or the excessive noise that these parrots make.
According to municipal data, Madrid is the area with the highest concentration of parakeets
in Spain, with around 13,000 in total, according to the last Spanish Society of Ornithology (SEO) Birdlife survey taken in 2019. This figure shows a huge increase from 2015, when there were an estimated 7,000 parakeets, having grown from just 1,700 in 2005 and the actual figure is believed to be at least 15,000.
And Madrid is not alone, with most urban cities along the Mediterranean coastline now sporting burgeoning populations of noisy parakeets.
Due to the number of complaints, the city council of Madrid has set in motion a project to eliminate almost the entire population of Argentinian and kramer parakeets, the plan being to reduce the population by around 90% in two years.
By 2023, only 10% of this exotic invasive species should remain in Madrid, the council using a number of tactics to capture the birds, using cages and nets, manually remove them from nests at night whilst they are sleeping, removing eggs from nests to prevent them hatching, removing chicks, removing nests and trapping the birds, following which, both birds and chicks will be "humanely sacrificed" in order to limit their numbers.
The town hall has contracted two companies; Matinsa and Dypsa to resolve the over-population problem and the first step is to review the nests in order to inventory the number of each species. This first part of the plan will take around 3 months to complete, with the total population expected to comfortably exceed the estimated 15,000 population believed to be living in the city.
But not all residents of the city are happy about the plans of the town hall to kill this number of birds and animal rights campaigners PACMA have continued to protest that the town hall has rejected alternatives to killing of the birds and in spite of offers to help resolve the problems through other routes seems only interested in continuing with its plans to slaughter nearly 13,000 beautiful parakeets.
The organisation delivered a petition to the council containing over 32,000 signatures calling for alternatives to be considered, but as the council continues with its plans to exterminate the birds, there appears to be little interest in finding alternative solutions.
Images: PACMA