The Department of Rural Development and the Environment is responsible for implementing the Recovery Plan of the Quebrantabones of Navarra and for monitoring this breeding population. According to the Department, in seven of the nine counties where the bones are present, they placed eggs and four pups born between March and April have managed to fly and leave the nest in summer; and the dispersion has begun. Among the nine territories occupied by the Quebrantabones is Aralar. For technicians, this is an indication of the territorial expansion of the species.

The breasts can live for years. Their survival, their low reproduction rate, is based on compensating for a long life expectancy. Every year the heat starts at the end of the autumn and, if everything goes well, the pups born between February and April do not fly from the root of the following year until the month of August. By overcoming the falls of the nest and other natural causes that often waste them, when they manage to fly, the chicks leave the nest and disperse. At 7 years of age they reach the age of reproduction and usually return to their territories of origin to grow.

Aralar

One of the territories in which the burning has tried to grow this year has been Aralar, the first territory outside the Pyrenees that colonized in the natural expansion of this species. The history of the colonization of this territory can provide an idea of the difficulty and the time interval that the creation of a new territory can take, and thus naturally extend this species outside the Pyrenees.

Kiriku, born in Arbaiun in 2006, settled in Aralar in 2012, when he reached adulthood. In 2017, a cooperative threesome was formed with another male and a female (Muel), marked in 2016 in Aragon at the age of 6. In the 2019 season, the female made her first set, but failed in incubation. This last season her baby was born, but a fall in the nest prevented her from flying.

Navarre has the third breast population in the south of the Pyrenees, far behind Huesca and Lleida. However, although the numerical importance of the Foral Community reaches only 6.3% of the State's population, the presence of this species in the Foral Community is considered fundamental, as it is a natural corridor for the expansion of the species to the mountain areas of northern Spain, uniting the Pyrenees with the Cantabrian Sierra and the northern Iberian System.

In partnership

The institutions on both sides of the Pyrenees have developed the Interreg-Poctefa ECOGYP project “ecosystem services, necrophagous predators and habitats” between 2017 and 2019. The necrophagous species studied within the project have been the quebrantabones, the common white vulture, the leonado vulture and the black vulture (acute necrophages) and the red milano (as facultative necrophages). Two publications summarizing the most relevant aspects of the project closure work have been published and published in digital format.

The ECOGYP project, co-financed by the European Fund for Rural Development (ERDF), was led by the Public Management Society of the Department of Rural Development and the Environment of the Government of Navarra and in which they participated as partners: Government of Aragon, Provincial Council of Álava, Fundación HAZI-Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa, Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux (LPO/BirdLife) and Fundació Catalunya La Pedrife.