Feature: Spain's Ebro Transfer - a major turnaround

Close to nature

(Author: Saren Starbridge)

The approval of the Ebro Transfer as an SNHP project immediately focussed concern on the Ebro Delta.

'The transfer would have had an indirect effect on my work as an English teacher,' explains local activist Cutts, 'but a direct effect on my soul. I have already noticed a slowing down, or halt, to local economies. For many years, young people have had to migrate to the large cities in the north of Catalunya to find work. The population of most towns is ageing. Progress is pitiful compared to other parts of Spain. This would have been the final nail in the coffin.'

'The only chance for future livelihoods depends on the area's natural resources and the principal one is the river and its delta.'

'The delta is incredible, it's another world,' says WWF campaigner Paloma Agrasot. 'The people understand their environment and their links with nature; their agriculture, mainly rice, is integrated into the natural cycles that provide water for wetlands. The fishermen could see how the transfer would alter their fisheries. They know they are part of the ecosystem. It gives them the power to be very persuasive. Anyone who has visited there wants to help.'

Noted as an Important Bird Area, listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, and part of the Natura 2000 network, the delta is an 8,000ha mosaic of sand dunes, salt lagoons and rice cultivation. About 300 bird species - 60% of all species found in Europe - rest, nest or feed here. Bird counts have recorded up to 180,000 individuals.

Numbers are important, but don't always attract public interest. The charismatic greater flamingo was chosen as a representative of the delta's biodiversity. The only one of the world's six flamingo species found in Europe, the greater flamingo is not as brightly coloured as its Caribbean and South American cousins, but it has the distinctive flamingo shape and appeal. Hundreds of pairs build their conical mud nests and raise their chicks on the Ebro delta. Changes to the river's flow would threaten not just their nests, but the nests of some 30,000 pairs of waterbirds.

Giant flamingo puppets joined the demonstrations and danced around the European Commission. Each member of the Parliament received a flamingo cut-out with directions on how to assemble it - and then 'screw it up and throw it away. That is what the Spanish government's NHP (Hydrological Plan) will do with the real version.'