A Spanish court in Albacete has
confirmed recently, in a landmark case, that an electricity utility (Iberdrola)
should pay a penalty of 26,000€ for the electrocution of 4 griffon vultures in
Ossa de Montiel (Albacete) last year. In October 2016 the Spanish Ministry of
Agriculture, Environment and Rural Development had fined the company 26,000€
because the line "had no mechanism to prevent electrocution".
The company then appealed to the
court, which now confirmed the penalty. This is important because it confirms,
in the eyes of the Spanish courts, civil liability for electrocution of
wildlife.
Electrocution is one of the major
threats affecting vultures worldwide, as it was clearly demonstrated in the
Vulture multi-Species Action Plan (MsAP), an international action plan covering
15 old world-vultures in more than 120 range states. This umbrella new strategy
for vultures - nature’s primary scavengers, providing indispensable ecological
services as carrion feeders and disposers of disease-carrying carcasses, was
developed by VCF, BirdLife International, and the IUCN Vulture Specialist Group
under a contract from the Coordinating Unit of the Raptors MoU under the
Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), and
will be hopefully adopted in the CMS conference of parties this fall. The
Vulture MsAP provides several solutions to minimize deaths by electrocution,
including legal advocacy towards the type of civil liability now enforced in
Spain.
There are relatively cheap and
effective solutions readily available to insulate dangerous pylons, so this
threat could easily be solved if electricity utilities, governments, and NGOs
all work together.
7th August 2017
