Landscape, Environmental, and Socioeconomic Impacts of an Invasive Bird Species: The Yellow-Legged Gull () in the Natural Park Salinas de San Pedro del Pinatar (Murcia, Southeastern Spain).

The yellow-legged gull () increased its population throughout the 20th century in its worldwide distribution area. In the Salinas de San Pedro del Pinatar, the population increased from having two breeding pairs in 1993 to 676 pairs in 2010 and from a wintering population of approximately 100-200 individuals in the 1980s to 1500-2000 individuals recorded in the 2010s, which has led to changes in habitats due to guano deposition, bird predation, incidents involving workers, and salt production. The objective of this study is to analyze the impacts of on the landscape, habitats, waterfowl, salt production, and workers, as well as to evaluate the effectiveness of control activities. Censuses of wintering have been carried out between 1990 and 2021, of nesting aquatic birds between 1994 and 2021, and nests and eggs of have been eliminated between 2000 and 2021. The result has been a decrease in pairs of , recovery of waterfowl populations, colonization of new bird species, absence of incidents with workers, and reduction in damage to salt production. Importantly, to reach a definitive solution, measures should be adopted to prevent from accessing the main sources of human food: urban solid waste dumps, aquaculture farms, and fish discards.