CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Despite improvements in the identification of dangerous designs and the retrofitting of many electrical pylons in developed countries, thousands of birds die electrocuted worldwide every year. The situation is much worse in the developing world, where this problem is rarely assessed. A small number of reports and studies exist for South America where the problem is still mostly out of the environmental agenda. Here we provide some data on electrocution events recorded opportunistically in different provinces of Argentina. We recorded birds? electrocution events in 10 provinces and five bird families with no previous records. So up to now electrocution events have been recorded in 13 of the 23 provinces implicating up to 11 bird families. Most birds were raptors (86.8%) that were found in 11 provinces, followed by parrots (11.4%) and herons (0.6%). The new records are in line with previous studies that showed that concrete pylons with jumpers above the crossarm or with vertical insulators are the most dangerous designs although three events occurred on pylons with transformers. In general, dangerous pylons are a small fraction of most power lines, although in some specific lines all the pylons were dangerous. Dangerous pylons were identified in areas where Black-chested Buzzard Eagle and Variable Hawk congregate, highlighting hotspots where power lines retrofitting could have a stronger improvement on raptors survival. However, retrofitting of dangerous pylons should be also prioritized in important areas for endangered species such as the Chaco Eagle. There is a general lack of knowledge about the problem by environmental authorities of regional governments, by the electricity companies and by environmental impact assessors imply that this threat is almost entirely overlooked in the country and thus specific awareness campaigns and training workshops on the problem are urgently needed.

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