3.3 million people, 2.2 million dogs and a good 640,000 cats live in Madrid. However, the estimated 12,000 monk parakeets that build their nests in the parks are becoming a problem in the Spanish capital. The green parrots are not unlike humans: They like to live among their own species and have a certain sense of order. The parakeets build community nests for up to ten pairs, each apartment with a separate entrance and several chambers for sleeping and breeding. In the end, such a construct weighs around 200 kilograms. Which partly explains why the monk parakeets are becoming a problem in Madrid: Imagine such a nest falling on your head in the park. And because of their screeching and excrement, the parakeets have long been a plague for the Madrilenians.
Another: the rabbits, which originally mainly populated the Casa de Campo pine forest to the west of the center. It was probably the pandemic and the curfew, which had been in effect for almost two months, that led the rabbits to believe that they could look for happiness and food a little further into town in the future. In any case, the residents of the Carabanchel district are now reporting that rabbits are getting the better of them. Schoolyards and playgrounds are closed, gardens gnawed, fences tunnelled. One fears the transmission of leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease. In 2009, not far from Madrid, there was one of the largest human outbreaks in Europe. Even then, rabbits were considered to be the trigger.
Where these come from is the subject of much speculation in Madrid. One says that while the ring road was being built, a rabbit was hiding on one of the trucks full of sand. Another thesis is much more likely: where Madrid is now, there was once grassland, where not only rabbits lived, but also their natural enemies. As the city expanded, the predators fled but the rabbits stayed. In the case of the monk parakeets, the connection is even clearer: the parrots, which actually come from South America, have long been in vogue as pets. Because of the bird flu, the EU banned the import of wild birds in 2005, the Spanish government followed suit with a law in 2013 that also banned the possession and sale of parakeets. So what did a lot of Spaniards do? They opened the cage doors.
Because monk parakeets lay up to eight eggs a year, they threaten the native fauna. Environmentalists warn that they may dispute food for the sparrows and transmit diseases to other species. Madrid therefore announced a plan in 2019 to decimate the population. The pandemic is only being implemented now: 2025 monk parakeets have already been eliminated, the town hall announced on Tuesday, shot by hunters who roam the parks with air rifles. The left opposition speaks of a “massacre”. From their point of view, it would be more tolerable and more effective to make the eggs in the nests sterile. It might also be cheaper: It should cost three million euros to shoot around 90 percent of the parakeets in Madrid. A bounty of 272 euros per bird. It is as if cannons were being shot at the sparrows’ enemies.