Can natural adventure and amusement parks serve as a refuge for species?

A recent study investigated the extent to which natural adventure and recreation parks can serve as a refuge for species. The study focused on one specific park.

The park investigated was called Sendaviva, located in Navarra, Spain, and established in 2004.

This study, called the ZooNaGreen Project, has been coordinated by the park’s Environment team and has had the collaboration of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), the Aranzadi Science Society and the University of Navarra, in Spain.

The aim of this project was to check whether Sendaviva, located in the Navarrese municipality of Arguedas, allows responsible coexistence with the area’s wildlife, by creating an area in which fauna and flora are respected, cared for and enhanced through planting, maintenance of vegetation and the creation of water points. To this end, from April 2023 to July of that year, the wild species found in the park and its surroundings were analysed.

Distributed in four working groups coordinated by Efrén Fernández, project coordinator of Sendaviva’s Department of the Environment, the ZooNaGreen project has made a great effort in sampling. Throughout the project, 30 chromatic attraction traps were used for pollinating insects, with which almost 6,000 arthropods were captured. In turn, the population of nesting birds was analysed, detecting 74 different species. In addition, thirty photo-trapping cameras were placed for six months that served to record 9,606 images of wild mesomammals and, finally, 576 night traps were installed in four plots that could potentially have, or have had in the recent past, a vegetation cover compatible with the presence of stable populations of micromammals.

The study demonstrates the function of the Sendaviva adventure and fun park as a refuge for species. (Photo: UPV/EHU)

Pollinating insects and birds

The Aranzadi Science Society has carried out the inventory of both pollinating insects and birds inside and outside the park. Researchers Beatriz Díaz and Alberto de Castro have analysed the group of pollinating insects, while Xabier Esparza and Juan Arizaga were in charge of the ornithology study.

As for birds, the study was carried out in an area of ​​about 25 square kilometres, in which 90 transects of 200 metres in length and with a bandwidth of 150 metres on each side were sampled.

In this way, 1,887 contacts were obtained for 74 species totalling 2,866 individuals, so the Ornithology Department of the entity has concluded that Sendaviva generates reproduction opportunities for species of aquatic birds or those linked to aquatic, riverine (thanks to its lake) and anthropized habitats (those modified by humans). From an avifaunistic point of view, this contributes to increasing the heterogeneity of habitats in the study region.

Similarly, as regards pollinating insects, 30 chromatic attraction traps were used to study bees and flower flies, since they are the most important pollinators in the area.

Thus, Aranzadi researchers have highlighted that the analyses do not show significant differences in abundance or in the richness of species and individuals of bees and hoverflies, since a similar number of both were recorded both outside and inside the park (21 bee morphospecies inside and 23 outside the park; seven hoverflies morphospecies inside and five outside the park). Therefore, the Navarrese park of Sendaviva does not harm the diversity of the insects analysed.

Mesomammals and micromammals

On the other hand, David Galicia, a researcher at the Institute of Biodiversity and Environment (BIOMA) of the University of Navarra, sampled four plots that could have, or had had in the recent past, a vegetation cover compatible with stable populations of micromammals, mainly field mice. In this group, it should be noted that captures and recaptures were very high within the park and no captures were obtained in the outer area.

These data provide very precise estimates of the total number of individuals, showing values ​​that are quite high compared to those recorded in other works in the Iberian Peninsula, probably due to the dense vegetation cover available at Sendaviva.

Finally, Jabi Zabala, from the Department of Zoology and Animal Cellular Biology at the University of the Basque Country, set up 30 camera traps in pine forest areas, with the intention of capturing images of wild medium-sized mammals.

In this way, 9,547 images were obtained, of which 1,588 were taken outside Sendaviva and 7,959 within the park grounds, and which have managed to detect up to seven species of wild mammals, of which two (the mountain cat and the marten) were only sighted within the park and another two (the roe deer and the wild boar) outside it, probably due to the physical barrier represented by the Sendaviva perimeter fence.

This suggests that Sendaviva acts as a refuge and reservoir for outside populations since, especially in the winter months, the mesomammals make more intensive use of the Sendaviva enclosure than the outside.

All of this shows that Sendaviva’s activity has achieved responsible coexistence with the area’s wildlife, without influencing some groups (such as pollinators), but increasing the use of its space by micro-mammals and mesomammals that can cross the perimeter fence, probably benefiting from the plant cover and the greater presence of natural food, and providing, with its infrastructure, a place of refuge for breeding birds linked to anthropized, aquatic and river habitats to the detriment of some steppe birds. (Source: UPV/EHU)