In the Cabañeros National Park (Castilla-La Mancha), 3,500 deer and 1,100 wild boar were captured per year before commercial and sport hunting was banned in the national parks on December 5, 2020. Since then, neither deer nor wild boars in the private hunting reserves ―44% of the 40,850 hectares of the park―, so that the problem of overpopulation of wild ungulates that drags the protected area has intensified.
Time has caught up and the National Parks authorized in an "extraordinary" way the hunting of some 5,000 specimens of deer, wild boar, fallow deer and mouflon on private farms, but as population control ―without the owners of the farms obtaining an economic benefit ― and in just one month, from January 28 to February 28.
In one of the largest private farms in the national park, with more than 6,000 hectares, the resolution sent by the Ministry of Sustainable Development of Castilla-La Mancha allowed the killing of 715 deer and 572 wild boar.
How do you slaughter that many cattle in a month?
"It's absolutely impossible," says Miguel Temboury, a lawyer for the Cabañeros Association of Affected People, made up of owners of large preserves.
"What Castilla-La Mancha has done is improvise and put the quotas before in 30 days, when before they fell from October to February."
In addition, the owners consider that they should be compensated, because "this activity has a cost."
The extraordinary authorization allows them to sell the meat of the pieces, but not to charge the hunters who participate.
Intensive hunting activity was carried out in many of the private preserves before the prohibition of commercial hunting.
To achieve good production, land was fenced off to prevent the cattle from leaving and they were offered supplementary feed, which allowed them to reproduce as if natural conditions were ideal, even though there was little food and water naturally.
This, together with the fact that the controls of the public parts of the park did not work either, has caused a problem of overpopulation of ungulates, which affects the fragile Mediterranean ecosystem of the national park.
According to those responsible for Cabañeros, the only solution is to control these populations with "specialized personnel", but under the supervision of the Administration.
The authorization was sent by the Ministry of Sustainable Development, but it was dealt with in the mixed commission of National Parks.
The powers over Cabañeros belong to the State, although the definitive transfer to the community of this national park and that of Las Tablas de Daimiel, also in Castilla-La Mancha, is planned for this year.
Antonio Aranda, head of the Natural Spaces Service of this community, explains that the quota of animals to be killed that is marked in the extraordinary authorization is "a maximum", so it is not mandatory to hunt that amount.
It is the calculation that is made by taking the density of animals per 100 hectares.
Cabañeros National Park, in 2021. JESÚS MONROY (EFE)
"In ideal conditions there should be 20 cattle for every 100 hectares, but we don't start from them, there are preserves where there are between 30 and 40 for every 100 hectares," explains Aranda.
With the control plan for ungulates not approved, time has come upon them, but their intention is that the capture of the animals takes place in the autumn, "because in January the birds go into heat and it is a matter of disturbing them as little as possible ”.
In any case, the problem will continue, because wild ungulates have no predators, and even if the wolf arrives, the current imbalance is such that it would be impossible for the canid to regulate populations, indicates the draft control plan for ungulates .
The autonomy hopes that the amount to be captured will be less and less: "We will no longer talk about 5,000 cattle, but about half," says Aranda.
Capture without hunts or hunts
The extraordinary permit indicates that the capture will be carried out with the methods of stalking - looking for the animal individually - and nightly waiting - waiting for the animal by attracting it with food.
Hunts or hunts in which dogs are used are not allowed.
"These are hunting modalities in which fewer pieces are charged because there are not many stalls and you have to take into account that the animals hide when they hear shots," Temboury maintains.
It adds that the Administration has only approached them informally and has not reached agreements with the owners, as indicated by the moratorium that was granted so that the preserves would adapt to the National Parks Law of 2014, which established that hunting activity was incompatible with these maximum protection spaces.
Thus, hunting was legally allowed for six years,
even though it was illegal.
Despite the time that has elapsed, the confrontation continues.
"We are exercising our rights, what cannot be is that a private area has police obligations, without any compensation," he maintains.
Miguel Ángel Hernández, spokesman for Ecologists in Action, points out that this is proof that in the national parks "hunting will continue and things are not done that way."
He charges the inks against the owners of the farms who "have permanently refused to reach agreements."
He also does not accept the regional government's plan for ungulates that is under study, because "it is poorly done and the damage they say the animals are causing is not justified."
“They are determined that we must continue hunting and extracting deer, but we tell them that there is no overpopulation and that they are doing it the other way around, because that method [capture] has been used for years and it has not helped them at all, just as they say”, specifies the ecologist.
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