Winter census of Red Kite in Navarra (Northern Spain) 2015: 7 % decline after two years of recovery

60 volunteers and the Rangers of the Government of Navarra counted 1.678 red kites in 19 roosting places last January

Navarra is a region of around 10.000 km² located in the northern part of Spain, along the Spanish/French border, and to the south of the Pyrenees. The Navarran population of Red Kites was first thoroughly monitored twice in the 90’s during the 92/93 and 93/94 wintering seasons and then continuously counted in the 2000’s for the last 17 winter seasons.

The results of the last wintering season are presented in this report. A full report and more detailed information can be found in The Red Kite in Navarra blog. The average of the population estimate for the Navarran population for the 17 census done is 1.957. The total count for the 2014/2015 wintering period was 1.678, down 9 % and 148 birds, from the previous 1.826 count. Furthermore, this value still represents 15 % less than the average census count and also represents a significant loss from the maximum value of 2.615 in 2007.

As a summary, in a few words, after two years with increasing values for the Navarran population this winter period observed a remarkable decrease in the number or wintering red kites. At the end of the day the values in this decade are far down from the averages values for the Navarran population in the 90’s, average value of 2.164 and the 00’s, average value of 2.059.

The Navarran wintering population of Red kite this year was distributed among 19 roosting areas, each one having a variable number of roosting places. Like in the previous two years the complete south of the region was not collecting many birds to the extent that even if we could see some scattered individuals during the day we were unable to locate any roosting places at all. This happens after the extinguishing of the roosting places of the Ribera and the prior disappearing of the roosting places in the Zona Media.

This population seems to be very dependent on the public dumping areas and this is the potential reason for the significant changes observed in the distribution of the kites inside the region in the last few winters when several dumping areas were closed and dumping activities concentrated in a few places.

This year 5 tagged red kites were spotted, 2 of them from a German origin and one from France. At the time of writing this report the origin of the remaining two is still to be found.

We do believe that national and international collaboration is a key factor in the conservation of the different species and in particular of the right kite. This year we are promoting the coordination of the census at a national level and will prepare a report when the data are collected.

Year	Population estimate	Count
1993	2290	2181
1994	2254	2147
2001	2249	2142
2002	2229	2026
2003	2008	1673
2004	2522	2522
2005	2244	2137
2006	2667	2615
2007	2240	2175
2008	1951	1894
2009	1959	1866
2010	1613	1536
2011	1810	1724
2012	1521	1449
2013	1755	1671
2014	1917	1826
2015	1.795	1.678
Average	2.060	1.957