Photograph released by the website of Rancho Buena Vista, where they offered the hunting service of the American bison.RANCHO BUENA VISTA
Two men pose smiling on the corpse of an American bison.
The image circulates on social networks just a few days after the Mexican environmental authorities were proud of the successful reintroduction of this animal in the plains of the State of Coahuila, in the north of the country.
Both men are shown to the camera while the animal lies inert, prostrate with its legs bent.
The photographs have generated numerous criticisms, after the Mexicans applauded the effort that allowed us to see these animals grazing again in the national territory after 100 years of their disappearance due to indiscriminate hunting.
The images were taken from the Facebook and Instagram pages of the Buena Vista ranch, located in Piedras Negras, on the border with the United States.
Both the website and the profiles on Facebook and Instagram were taken down this Tuesday, but in it you could see several photographs of American bison hunts with dates of capture between 2011 and 2015, as EL PAÍS was able to corroborate before they were discharged.
The site offered between one and two hunting excursions for species such as white-tailed deer and American bison, among other protected wild species in Mexico and the United States.
The Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources has reported that it is investigating the circumstances in which these bison were hunted, since in its records there is no hunting permit (for authorized hunting) of the American bison at the Buena Vista ranch. .
"There are no reports on approved management plans and uses for the species granted to a ranch in Coahuila with the name Buena Vista, or with the characteristics shown in the photos displayed," the agency explained in a statement.
For their part, the environmental authorities of Coahuila indicated that hunting of the American bison for the purpose of hunting attraction is not allowed.
The project to reintroduce the American bison in Mexico began in November 2009, when a herd of 23 animals from the Wind Cave National Park - located in South Dakota (United States) - was released as part of a collaboration between Mexico and the United States. to recover the species, which in 2016 President Barack Obama declared the First National Mammal.
A second herd was released last year in Coahuila, demonstrating the success of the program to recover the species.
So far, there is no indication that the photographs of the hunters imply the specimens that the Mexican government is taking care of.
#Comunicado
📌 # Semarnat has not authorized hunting permits for the American Bison.
In relation to the photographs that circulate in networks where a Bison victim of hunting is observed, Find out! 👇🏽
▶ ️ https://t.co/GFtwiQIGnN#SomosMedioAmbiente pic.twitter.com/xzoPyz12PY
- SEMARNAT México (@SEMARNAT_mx) January 12, 2021
The animal, also known as buffalo, was dominant in the wide fields of northern Mexico and the plains of the United States and Canada, where it grazed in huge herds.
300 years ago, according to the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp) of Mexico, in the North American territory there were between 30 and 60 million bison, but “by 1880, unfortunately, the population was reduced to little more than 1,000 individuals, due to to the destruction and fragmentation of grasslands, diseases and hunting ”.
Thanks to a joint project that involved environmental authorities, universities, scientists and with the support of the United States National Park Service, the huge mammals once again grazed on Mexican territory, but their survival, again, is threatened by those who they see in this enormous mammal a hunting prey.