INFORMATIVE ESSAY

THE BEARDED VULTURE (EL TRENCALÒS): an endangered animal

The aim of this essay is learn more things about a bird called “el trencalòs”. It’s the strangest vulture that we have in Catalonia. Nowadays there are only 33 couples of vultures living in Catalonia.

“El trencalòs” is a type of vulture. It lives in areas from 600m. to 2200m high. Like all its vultures, it eats rests of dead animals. It kills them: it takes its preys with its paws and flies from a high height. Then, it drops the animal to the ground.

This animal is endangered. The most important reason is that many people hunted them some years ago. Another reason is that this animal eats wild animals like chamois and grazing animals as sheep, and in the last years there haven’t been many chamois because the weather hasn’t been good and they haven’t eaten enough to survive.

The government and other organisations are working to get that “el trencalòs” raise in number in Pirineus: they are creating special places where the members of the organisations put food for the vulture. The government has passed a new law that says that the electrical networks that pass in the places where “el trencalòs” lives must be destroyed and they must pass for another place.

Nowadays, “el trencalòs” is an endangered animal in our country. However, everyday there are more laws and more activities in order to avoid that this animal disappearS from Pirineus. I hope that these laws and activities produce results and in a few years we can see more “trencalosos” in the mountains than now.