An “invasion” of chickens has gradually seized parks and green areas, Alicante, and so far no one has been able to avoid reproduction or capture them. The City Council, aware of the health and road safety problems that lead more than 700 chickens to be wide in public space, brought out a public contract in February this year so that some company took care of them. However, the company that received the commission has now announced that it renounces, since the birds must capture alive and take to a sanctuary, something for which they say they have no capacity.
The flock had its origin in 2014, in the roundabout of the Las Naciones Park, as the local newspaper then reviewed Information. At that time there were only 40 copies that someone had irresponsibly left there, but among the neighbors who fed them and until they reached the more than 700 that are calculated today. Not only do they live in that environment, but little by little they have colonized towards the southwest of the municipality other spaces such as the La Estación Park, the Canary Islands Square, an abandoned plot of the weather vane and the surroundings of the San Roque neighborhood and the urbanization of luxury Villa Amalia.
Videos and images of social networks show chicks, roosters and chickens around the parks of the parks or crossing the streets of the city. “You go on the road with the car and you suddenly come out,” says Inma, a neighbor of Torrevieja who also works in the surroundings of Las Naciones. The local press has indicated that some of the birds have been crossing the N-332 road, which has generated situations of road danger. The other problem is the health danger generated by chickens in public space. “There are dirty streets and make noise at all hours,” says Inma.
The Torrevieja City Council budgeted about 26,000 euros for the contract, with a duration of one year. The company that received the tender, Ecoplanín Xestion and Environmental Information, based in Galicia, presented a proposal for 19,600 euros, so the capture of the 700 birds would cost about 28 euros per animal, compared to the 37 planned by the Consistory. However, the company has decided to resign because it alleges that they had not been correctly informed that animals should not only be captured alive and transferred to a sanctuary, but that finding this place also had to be in charge. In no case could they be exterminated, in compliance with current regulations of the Animal Protection Law.
“We regret a lot the damages that we could have caused to the City of Torrevieja and the neighbors, especially because of the delays that this may cause,” says Miguel Ángel Fernández, director of Ecoplanín. According to Fernández, his company had already prepared the protocol to apply to capture chickens without causing damage as the necessary tools, but at the last minute they have read “The small print”. “We are a company that is dedicated to the control of exotic species, and we have already dealt with Galapagos turtles communities, for example, but we take them to a Recovery Center of the Xunta, which we did not have to look for us,” he explains.
The sanctuaries to which the flock should be transferred are usually privately owned and in them are “farm” animals that the livestock farms qualify as excess or others that have been abandoned as in the case of the chickens of Torrevieja, explains Yolanda Morales, national spokesman for the Pacma animalist party. “From these animals you cannot get profitability,” says Morales, and their stay in the sanctuaries must ensure that they die naturally. To capture chickens properly, you should preferably be done at night, when they are at rest, and using trap cages and not networks, since these can cause fractures in the wings.
With the resignation of Ecoplanín, the Torrevieja City Council is again unanswered for a problem problem. The next step will be to call the other companies that presented themselves to the tender in search of a solution, although the newspaper Information He assures that several of the seven who were left out at first are dedicated to extermination.
Although a part of the Torrevejenses see chickens as the enemy, others consider them almost convecinas. “There are many people who are funny and the children who walk like to see them. They also eat the bichitos, so on that side they do well,” says Félix, a neighbor of the La Estación Park. And, says the neighbor, they are even seeing them as an “attraction”, like the monkeys of Gibraltar.
