The Biodiversity Foundation has coordinated the presentation of the project for the recovery of the marbled teal in Spain, recently submitted to the 2016 call of the European funding program LIFE. The marbled teal in our country is currently at its most critical demographic moment, so it is a threatened species classified as “endangered” in the Spanish Catalogue of Threatened Species, with a negative dynamic and at serious risk of disappearing.

It is an emblematic web-footed waterbird in Spain. It is distributed from the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands and the Maghreb to East Turkestan, Punjab and Central Asia. The Spanish population is divided into two main nuclei: the Andalusian (centred on the Guadalquivir Marshes) and the Valencian (in the Baix Vinalopó Wetlands).

The project submitted to the 2016 LIFE call is coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation and has as partners the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, through the General Directorate of Environmental Quality and Evaluation and the Natural Environment, the Junta de Andalucía, the Government of the Region of Murcia, the Generalitat Valenciana, the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Association of Naturalists of the Southeast (ANSE) and SEO/BirdLife.

The implementation period of the initiative is established as five years, from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2022, and an estimated budget of 7.3 million euros, with a contribution from the European Commission of 75% (4.9 million euros).

To enrich the proposal, the Biodiversity Foundation launched an innovative participation process in June through which interested parties were able to provide comments and actions to the project and thanks to which 29 letters of support have been received.