The Council and the professional organizations of the sour (opas) urge the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge to transmit to the European Commission the approved biannual report on the conservation status of the wolf which envisages a “favorable” status in the Atlantic regions. … and Mediterranean. Furthermore, the Executive promised to review the scales of compensatory allowances in 2023 to adapt them to current market values.
In a statement sent by the Executive, the Council ensures that it has analyzed the current situation of wolf management in Spain and Castile and León in light of the regulatory changes approved this year, both at the European level, in the Habitat Directive, and at the Spanish State level, with the approval of the law on the prevention of food loss and waste. With these modifications, recalled the regional government in a press release, the management of the wolf by the States is relaxed, integrating all populations into Annex V of the Habitat Directive, which makes it possible to adopt management measures.
In turn, with the approval of the law against food waste, the wolf populations in the north of the Duero River were excluded from the list of wild species under special protection regime, and the automatic exclusion of the populations in the south of the Duero was determined once the directive was amended to include all wolf populations in Annex V.
Therefore, once the modification of the Habitat Directive has been approved, all wolf populations in Castile and León, north and south del Duero, are included in Annex V of the Directive, which allows the adoption of management measures on the species.
However, the Council regretted that despite this, the wolf cannot be hunted if its conservation status, according to the biannual reports, is “unfavorable”, as indicated in the previous biannual report. For this reason, he recalled that the Spanish government did not send the new one to the European Commission, as it should have done before July 31, under the “pretext” of assessing the effect of forest fires on wolf populations. “This fact is not a reason to delay its sending since the six-year report covers the years 2019 to 2024, the year 2025 not being the subject of an evaluation,” he stressed.
The six-year report approved by the State Commission for Natural Heritage and Biodiversity on July 14 concludes that the conservation status of the wolf is “favorable” for both the Atlantic and Mediterranean regions. In accordance with the provisions of the law relating to the prevention of food loss and waste, this report should have been submitted to the Sectoral Environment Conference before its submission to the European Commission and, once the report was approved according to the criteria of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, this conference was canceled and, to date, it has not been convened again.
For all these reasons, both the Council and the agricultural organizations They demanded that the ministry comply with state obligations regarding the Habitat Directive as well as the legal mandate of the Food Loss and Waste Prevention Act.
On the other hand, the Authority is committed to reviewing and updating in the coming weeks the compensation scales for damage caused by wolves approved by the Authority of Castilla y León in 2023, thus adjusting it to current market values. To this end, new working meetings will be convened in the near future to advance the improvement and definition of these new scales, thus demonstrating the commitment of the Government of Castile and León to the livestock sector.
About The Author
