• PACMA hails victory for Guadarrama mountain goats faced with culling plan
• Madrid regional gov’t plan would have hunters kill 2,500 goats by year 2020
The regional Supreme Court of the community of Madrid (TSJM, Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Madrid) has dismissed a request by the Madrid regional government for repeal of a court-ordered ban issued in October on the culling by hunters of some 2,500 mountain goats in the Sierra de Guadarrama mountains under a government-proposed plan.
The ban issued by a lower court in October was the result of a legal complaint filed by the Partido Animalista (PACMA), which has called on the government to consider other non-lethal methods of controlling the mountain goat population in the Guadarrama mountains and of managing the wild goats’ cohabitation with other species, including cattle who graze in the area.
PACMA favors the animals’ population be controlled via other non-lethal means, including fostering the increase in the Guadarrama area of the goats’ natural predator, the near-extinct native Iberian wolves, which were successfully re-introduced into the mountains after a six-decade absence caused largely by over-hunting.
The TSJM ruling dismissed the government of Madrid’s appeal and accompanyig demand that PACMA pay three million euros as a guarantee against what it said would be “health damage to the population” because the culling plan had been blocked.
► ► CLICK ABOVE TO WATCH VIDEO ► ►
► Read More in Spanish at El País and Europa Press …
► Read PACMA news release in Spanish here …
