The EU and the ecosystem

Okay, I know I’m just a stupid American and I simply don’t understand much more than consuming more products than most of the rest of the world (or something like that), but could someone tell me how this is anything but a bad practice? The Spaniards, thanks to an EU directive, are taking away an entire species’ main source of food.

There have been reports from across the French Pyrenees this year of a radical change in the way the region’s vultures behave. A programme to incinerate animal carcasses in Spain has deprived “les vautours” of food, causing them to become aggressive. Where once they scavenged, now they hunt, according to farmers.

And the result, according to farmers and tourists, are “mutant vultures” that are now hunting instead of scavenging.

When a French pensioner died of a brain haemorrhage during a walk in the Pyrenees this summer, vultures started circling low over the body.

“His three friends were really frightened,” said a local resident. “They were convinced the vultures were going to attack. They shouted and waved their arms and, in the end, they managed to scare the birds away. But they were in a complete panic.”

Mind you, I’m thinking the farmers may be exaggerating somewhat, but still, if you take away a major food source from an animal, well, it’s a no-brainer that that animal’s behavior is going to change.

Alain Larralde, a cattle breeder in Ilharre in the French Basque country, said that in May he saw dozens of birds circle and kill a cow. “There were so many of them that they covered the entire meadow,” he said. “Then I saw the cow slumped on the ground in the middle being devoured. It really hurt. You can’t image what it’s like to see an animal being eaten alive.”

So far this year officials have registered 42 demands for compensation from breeders who say their livestock has been attacked by vultures. There were 33 requests last year.

But ornithologists say it is collective hysteria. Denis Vincent, of the French Bird Protection League, said: “For the most part these stories don’t stand up. It’s impossible for vultures to fly off with animals bigger than them, as people have claimed, especially when those animals are alive.” He said that farmers were blaming vultures for killing sheep and cattle when, in fact, they were eating carcasses. Jean-Louis Venant, who collects birds of prey, added: “The habits of vultures haven’t changed for thousands of years.”

I’d be careful if you’re planning a trip to the Pyrenees.

But vultures may never have been hungrier. A 2006 European Union directive forced Spain to ban the practice of leaving carcasses in open trenches. In upper Aragon, on the French border, they ate an estimated 8,000kg (17,600lb) of rotting meat every day. These carcasses are now burnt and Aragon’s 10,000 or so vultures must look elsewhere. In June, 200 were spotted in Belgium, where bird-lovers put 200kg of pork out for them “to build up their strength” for the journey back to Aragon.

So let’s review: The EU, which is supposed to improve the collective European existence, is being blamed for causing the vultures of Spain to attack people and animals in Spain, due to the new rule forcing Spain to burn animal carcasses rather than leaving them to be cleaned up by—the ecosystem’s garbage collectors. This, mind you, is from the same EU that is banning genetically altered foods, saying that we don’t know what kind of damage there could be to the ecosystem, among other charges.

I guess messing with the ecosystem is okay when they do it.