• Biodiversity Invasive species take their toll on the economy and health

The Hispanic goat is currently experiencing its golden age in Spain but is about to die of success.

Never, since it began to populate the Iberian Peninsula back in the Pleistocene, had this protected species had such a significant number of specimens or had such a high level of protection.

Its extraordinary expansion, hand in hand with the rigid legislation that regulates hunting and the absence of natural predators, is, however, one step away from putting the largest populations at risk.

With them, they

also endanger the ecosystems in which they live crowded

, destroying all kinds of plant species in danger of extinction.

The mntesa goat

inhabits our country since Prehistory

throughout the territory and has always been accompanied by a halo of magic and mystery that has made it a quasi-mythological animal for the inhabitants of its ecosystems.

Deer, bison, but also goats appear in cave caves in any area.

The man of the Magdalenian period already hunted them 15,000 years ago with rudimentary weapons.

Much later they became an object of desire in the hunts of the Goth kings, Alfonso X El Sabio wrote about this species and even the Arabs spoke of the wild male.

Historic hunts of Alfonso XIII

But it was King Alfonso XIII who transformed them into a true legend by organizing great hunts in the Sierra de Gredos, an enclave that throughout the 20th century has become his great sanctuary.

It is about the space in which the species acquires a more slender morphology, with the most precious horns thanks to its genuine rounded shape, and where it has stoically resisted even in the worst moments.

One of the hunts of Alfonso XIII

Precisely the mountain range of Avila has not only produced the best specimens of the Hispanic goat throughout its history but also to its greatest scholars.

Arturo González Cardalliaguet, 37 years old and with an academic background in biology, has a degree in Business Administration and Management and Marketing, but he has become one of its great specialists.

His knowledge has been reflected in a recent study on the species that addresses its past, its present and its disturbing future.

"The Gredos subspecies is the most valued in the hunting world," he

proudly explains to EL MUNDO because of his condition as an Avila, born in Ávila and raised in the town of La Adrada.

"It is different because of its horn, with a lyre shape and a spectacular curvature."

But also, he adds, "because of the spectacular nature of the environment in which he lives."

"In the past, the National Tourist Board promoted Gredos and generated a knock-on effect. It was hunted in free land, whoever caught a goat first was his. Before Alfonso XIII created the royal preserve, everyone hunted it and competed with him. cattle of the shepherds ".

Therefore, it was the ranchers themselves who hunted it to end their competition in times of shortage of pasture, placing the species on the brink of extinction.

González recalls that "Alfonso XIII, who was a very hunter, decided to build a royal preserve in 1905 that affected the Sierra de Gredos regional park."

But it was not "until 1911 that the first royal hunt was carried out and the first large specimens were obtained."

At that time, at the beginning of the 20th century, "only twelve copies were counted, the goat was on the verge of disappearance in all of Spain".

However, the intervention of the monarch meant that "in just six years, the species multiplied dramatically."

"When the royal preserve was created, guards were appointed to the shepherds and poachers with a salary of 2.5 pesetas a day to stop hunting them and the uncontrolled hunting of specimens was put to an end".

"There were the Blázquez and Chamorro families, in which the condition of guards passed from father to son and they participated in raids led by the King in which bombs were used to provoke the stampede of the herds."

In fact, "one of the older guards exploded in his hand and he was renamed El Manco," he says when exhibiting the findings he has come across in recent months in the archives of the Royal Palace.

"Alfonso XIII took to his hunts in August 1919 the Prince Don Genaro, the Duke of Santoña, the Marquis de la Escala or those of Villaviciosa de Asturias and Viana, who was the King's greatest hunter," he continues.

"In that hunt they killed 15 goats, but in 1930 the hunts lasted two days and 116 were killed."

"The goats that were hunted in the royal hunts were destined for charity. The King kept the head of the best specimens and made sure that the rest reached the beaters, the Civil Guard and the charities."

"Normally they do not like to be said, but thanks to hunting this species was saved"

, which González assures had practically disappeared from the Peninsula.

The poison of the passion for nature and the ancient legends that accompany the mountain goat was inoculated a few years ago by Ismael del Peso, a historic forester of the Valle de Iruelas nature reserve, located next to the El Burguillo reservoir.

Del Peso has inadvertently become an indisputable reference that has managed to keep alive the Avila oral tradition around hunting and the protection of its main species.

A specimen in GredosFracisco Motilva

"I have insisted on taking hunting courses and masters but they have given me nothing that I did not already know thanks to him", González values ​​his tutor on the ground.

Both closely linked to one of the best nature photographers in Spain, Francisco Motilva, who has become the great portraitist of the most beautiful specimens of this species in the area.

Del Peso tells this newspaper that "the mountain goat is to Gredos what thunder is to the storm, what breath is to life, an indissoluble binomial", that despite the decisive push of Alfonso XIII, it passed a critical moment during the famine that happened to the Civil War.

"Where in the villages there were not even the cats."

"The need was abundant, the resources scarce, and where the firearm was not enough, ingenuity did."

It recalls that a hunting technique called vaqueo was implanted in the Sierra de Gredos, which consisted of the hunter intermingling with the cattle with a cowbell on his waist, covering himself with a goat or cow skin to neutralize the smell. human, and in this way it approached the specimens of Hispanic goat that descended to the lowest levels of the Alberche Valley.

Boards were also installed in ravines in which a handful of salt and dried figs were deposited so that the goats, hungry for minerals in such a granite soil, would fall into the void.

However,

the Hispanic goat was always an animal that aroused a mythological attraction,

defying the laws of gravity and "accessing the troughs that only eagles accessed from the sky."

"It inspired legends and superstitions that gave the mountains a certain magic and supernatural attributions."

Thus, "the blood of the mountain goat had healing powers in ocular ailments, the marrow of its bones healed fractures and was used as a vital restorative to combat anemia and malnutrition".

"

Amulets and ornaments were made with their horns and hooves and they were used to drive away wolves

and weasels, burning them in bonfires and chicken coops, impregnating the environment with the strong smell of burning horn."

But their skins were also used to make bags and zambombas, in which they "woke up to the smell of the animal with the humidity, attributing this phenomenon to the resurrection of the animal's spirit, which never completely died, like its presence in these valleys. , where his disappearances and sudden reappearances alternate ", he adds from his forest cabin in the foothills of the Sierra de Gredos.

A hunting plan

"The problem is that now there are plenty of examples of mountain goats, there is an outrage," said González.

"In Madrid the mountain goat was introduced with 24 specimens at the end of the 80s and now there are more than 6,000

goats in the Community of Madrid. The optimal population should range between 1,500 and 2,000 specimens. It is as if in a flat for 10 people put 50. That is why there

is

already

an outbreak of scabies about to jump

that can destroy all that population at once, because nature is wise and regulates itself. It has already happened in the Picos de Europa with the chamois and it is already happening in Teruel, where there is an outbreak that is also transmitted to man. Therefore, we are already talking about a public health problem ".

Hence, González is also the author of a project that contemplates introducing an important mountain goat population into the Iruelas Valley that will serve as a strategic reserve in case other colonies on the plateau collapse.

At this point, it has developed a technical hunting plan in which the homologation of the females of the species, hitherto reviled in the hunts, is introduced.

"It is curious, all the hunting species of big game have been approved except the female goat.

Hunting a male costs between 3,000 euros and 60,000 euros

depending on the quality of the specimen.

A female costs only 150 euros to 350 euros, being much more important than the male ".

A goat affected by scabies in Granada

In this way, "many more hunting licenses" would be generated and "a new avenue of income" would be created.

And it is that, it should be remembered, that each council corresponds to a proportional amount for the hectares that they give to the hunts in addition to generating additional income.

"It has not been possible to control the Hispanic goat populations, either by judicial decisions or by the intervention of environmental associations. And the best mechanism to regulate it, in my opinion, is hunting. There we have the example of Gredos, where the populations they are very controlled. "

For González, "the main problem of the species right now is in Madrid, where there are more and more and they live worse."

"People do not know that killing a wild male generates money that ends up in the public coffers and improves Health. If in the Sierra de Guadarrama you hunt by half, about 3,000 counting males and females, you would generate an additional income of 2.4 million Euros. How can it be that today we do not give value to something precious by Alfonso XIII himself, who in his first hunt already hunted a female specimen? ", he emphasizes.

All of this so that, as the Iruelas forest ranger recalls, "beyond the eagle, nothing continues to fly and no one lives" and that between "the eagle and the mountains, only the Ávila goat continues to exist."

But also so that their fights in mating season continue to rumble in the Alberche valleys "like thunder from a summer storm."

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