Their lagoons languishing, precious Spanish wetlands go dry

DOÑANA NATIONAL PARK, Spain (AP) — Flamingos, herons and fish once filled a freshwater lagoon in southern Spain. Today, it's a fetid brown splotch. The whisper of wind in the grass is a sad substitute for the cacophony of migratory birds.

Biologist Carmen Díaz steps onto cracked mud. The lagoon in the heart of Spain’s Doñana nature reserve is a puddle. The park called “the crown jewel of Spain” may be dying.

Farming and tourism had already drained the aquifer feeding Doñana. Then climate change hit Spain with record-high temperatures and a prolonged drought this year. The disappearance of Doñana’s Santa Olalla lagoon’s in August makes Díaz, 66, fear that the ecosystem she has studied for four decades may have vanished for good.

“Seeing this last bit of water makes me think that the entire park is dry,” Díaz said.

Doñana’s Santa Olalla lagoon was the biggest of the handful of lagoons that maintained some water year-round, providing a summer reservoir of aquatic plants and animals.

Sitting on an estuary where the Guadalquivir River meets the Atlantic Ocean, Doñana covers 74,000 hectares (182,000 acres). The reserve was founded in the 1960s with help from environmental group WWF. A UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve, Doñana is a wintering site for a half-million waterfowl and a stopover spot for millions more birds that migrate from Africa to northern Europe. Home to five threatened bird species, including the endangered Spanish imperial eagle, Doñana also hosts a breeding-and-rescue center for the endangered Iberian lynx.

“The solution should have come at least 20 years ago but nothing was done. The environment always loses against the economy," said Díaz, a researcher for the Spanish National Research Council. "Doñana has been the crown jewel of Spain...