usatoday24
The saddest thing that can be said of an animal can be said of the Iberian Castor: No one is very clear when it was extinguished. For years the researchers have discussed whether the last specimens disappeared in the seventeenth century, in the eighteenth or, even, in the nineteenth century to realize that all this was wet paper. But the only available evidence They place them in the second century BC. After that moment, nobody knows what happened to them.
But something happened in 2003. In the spring of 2003 and illegally, someone introduced 18 European beavers from Bavaria. No one knows for sure who was or why he did it. In fact, They were discovered by surprise Thanks to “the existence of a series of indications, very conspicuous, that reveal the establishment of a small population of beavers in northern Spain.”
What we do know is that, although it was tried to eradicate, it was not achieved. And now, he has overflowed the Bajo del Río Aragón course where he found himself and is now considered all the purposes An native animal subject to environmental protections.
Beyond the Ebro. If the Pyrenees had worked as an effective barrier to the beaver, once the situation has entered the situation again. A few years later, we had found Castores in the Duero Basin and in the Guadalquivir.
What we hadn’t found were still beavers in the Tagus.
And in June 2024, two researchers They found themselves With them in Zorita de los Canes, province of Guadalajara. That is, more than one hundred kilometers in a straight line of the closest place where they had previously reported.
What is happening here? Because if we stop to think for a moment, we will discover that this expansion of the beavers It is not natural. In 2023, Teresa Calderón biologist calculation that the beavers of Tormes would have taken 40 years to get there by their own means from the closest documented population.
In the Andalusian case, or there is a way for these specimens to travel alone the 365 kilometers of southern submeta that are between the stretch of the Guadalquivir where they were found in 2023 and the closest point where we had previously found them.
The only rational explanation is that Someone is putting them there.
“Beaver Bombing”. Thus (“Bombing of Castores”) is what is called a little rare practice for years: to release groups of illegally managers in areas where they had supposedly lived.
And they not only do it without permission: they do it without previous studies, or guarantees, or planning.
“As the IUCN establishes, to make a reintroduction of any extinct animal in a territory it is necessary to carry out a series of studies that are almost common sense,” Francisco José García rememberedBiologist and expert in mammals from the climate semm, “we have to know why they were extinguished at the time, under what conditions the animals lived then and if these conditions are maintained. And we must work on the social perception of the species, You can’t do your back things to society.
And then? The problem, as happened with The reintroduction of the wolfgetting that “social and political support” is complicated and some groups have decided not to wait.
The story gives for A rural thrillerbut he raises many doubts about what will happen in the future. Not only if Castor’s communities will grow in Spain, but this practice will be extended to more species.
Image | Svetozar Cenisev
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