• Protection Minister Ribera recommends shielding the wolf

  • Protection Kill the wolf to save it

The State Commission for Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, a body in which the Spanish Government, the autonomous communities and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla are represented, has agreed this Thursday

in a tight vote to

include the Iberian wolf in the List of Wild Species under the Special Protection Regime (Lespre), which means that hunting north of the Duero will be prohibited.

The existing Iberian wolf populations in Spain are already protected throughout the south of the Duero River after the Ministry for the Ecological Transition agreed in June 2019 to extend this circumstance to those of Castilla y León and the Community of Madrid.

Therefore, the wolf

will be protected throughout the national territory and its sport hunting will be prohibited

, as is already the case in France and Portugal, according to sources familiar with the vote of the State Commission for Natural Heritage and Biodiversity informed Servimedia.

The wolf will cease to be a hunting species, so the quotas for hunting specimens that several autonomous communities grant annually will end.

Asturias, Cantabria, Castilla y León, and Galicia had already recently shown their disagreement with conservation

of this species.

The proposal has required

a double vote because in the first a tie was reached

.

Cantabria, Asturias, Castilla y León and Galicia, all of them regions with wolf populations north of the Duero, have voted against the proposal, a position to which other autonomous communities governed by the PP have joined, according to sources familiar with the vote.

In any case, the proposal has gone ahead with the favorable vote of the rest of the regions and will be submitted to Minister Teresa Ribera, who will materialize the decision through a ministerial order.

Satisfaction among environmental and conservation groups

For Ecologists in Action, "it is a historic day in the protection of the wolf" because, after years of social mobilizations and complaints from environmental organizations, most of the autonomous communities and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge have decided to initiate the process to protect the Iberian wolf.

This organization urged the autonomous communities north of the Duero to "from today" stop authorizing the hunting activity in wolves, pursue their illegal hunting and collaborate with the ranchers in

promoting the coexistence between the wolf and the livestock

in order to avoid or reduce wolf attacks on livestock, with methods such as the use of mastiff dogs, greater surveillance of livestock or night collection of them.

For his part, WWF Secretary General Juan Carlos del Olmo said: "Today is a historic day for the conservation of biodiversity in our country."

He commented that the inclusion of the wolf in the Lespre supposes "the formal recognition of the value of this species, that it stops being a hunting species and, therefore, is committed to its protection."

"We hope that this is a first step to change to the current model, based on the persecution and death of the wolf, to make way for a new one, more typical of the 21st century, focused on the conservation of the species and on coexistence with human activities From WWF we will continue working to achieve this ", he added.

The opposition of the communities with more wolf specimens

This same Thursday, the Minister of Development and Environment of Castilla y León, Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, had expressed his disagreement with the protection that has been given to the species.

As he said, it would make no sense to "go further" than what the EU has already established on the Iberian Wolf through its Habitat directive,

"against four autonomous communities that host 98 percent of the species

.

"

"It would be an absolute attack against rural development, against livestock and the general interests of both Castilla y León and the northwest where the Iberian Wolf is managed sensibly, in an orderly manner," insisted Suárez-Quiñones, who has not seen in the request of the Association for the Conservation and Study of the Iberian Wolf (ASCEL) that has been approved this Thursday "no reason for conservationism but ideological".

The Iberian Wolf is "sufficiently protected, it is populating areas where it was not previously", concluded the Minister of Castilla y León.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Spain

  • Castile and Leon

  • Galicia

  • Cantabria

  • Asturias

  • Portugal

  • France

  • Madrid's community

  • Madrid

  • Melilla

  • Ceuta

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