The Relationship between the Built World and the Nesting Habits of the European White Stork: A Case Study of Segovia, Spain C

The European white stork (Ciconia ciconia) is listed as an Annex I species by Directive 2009/147/EC, adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union on 30 November 2009. This directive calls for special protective and supportive measures to be taken to create, maintain, or re-establish the biotopes upon which the species relies. Extending the notion of the biotope to the urban fabric within which the European white stork frequently nests, and utilizing the city of Segovia, Spain as the site of an intrinsic case study, this research seeks to understand whether there are specific built world parameters that play a supportive or hindering role in the urban nesting preferences of the species. The existing discourse has tended to investigate this topic from a macro scale, oftentimes glossing over the built world in favor of a strictly ecological or resource-based analysis of European white stork nesting behavior. The findings presented within this paper on the other hand offer a more fine-grained exploration of the subject matter, underscoring that specific built world and built-world-to-habitat connections do appear to exert influence over the nesting preferences of the European white stork—namely, variations in height in the roofscape, total area of the potential nesting-location, roof slope and tree species, the strength of views to the habitats used for daily hunting and foraging by the species, and proximity to busy traffic arteries. These findings not only offer a beginning foray into the subject of how built-environmental parameters influence the European white stork´s navigation and habitation of the urban arm of its species´ biotope, but also frame future avenues for built-environmental research for scholars and researchers involved in this physical-ecological intersection of investigation. Keywords: built environment, urban ecology, urban ecosystems, Ciconia ciconia