The Council of Ministers has authorized at its meeting today the signing of two collaboration agreements between the Ministry of the Environment and the Valencian Community and Extremadura to carry out actions to reduce mortality by electrocution of birds of prey, included in the National Catalog of Endangered Species. The total contribution of the General State Administration for these two agreements amounts to 430,000 euros.

In the case of the agreement with the Ministry of Territory and Housing of the Generalitat Valenciana, it amounts to 230,000 euros, which will be financed by the Ministry of the Environment, while the Valencian Community will provide the necessary work for the development of the projects, as well as the monitoring studies.

The second agreement, which is called “Modification of power lines in Extremadura”, has a total budget of 800,000 euros, of which the Ministry of the Environment contributes 200,000 euros, the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment of the Junta another 200,000 euros and the company Iberdrola the remaining 400,000 euros.

Although much progress has been made in the adaptation of lines, there are still very dangerous lines in which the death of endangered species occurs. For example, the electrocution of birds of prey in the supports of power lines is one of the main causes of unnatural death of species. These works to modify the lines will be carried out on the power lines where a higher mortality of birds has been detected, mainly where the most endangered species have been affected.

For this reason, the purpose of the Ministry of the Environment is to establish agreements to collaborate with the Autonomous Communities to solve this problem by modifying the most dangerous lines, using existing technology, which is the most appropriate and effective. On 11 November, the Council of Ministers authorised an agreement of the same characteristics with the Autonomous Community of Castilla-La Mancha.