• WWF España calls on Asturias’ Socialist president to halt wolf hunting
• NGO will appeal to EU over ‘disproportionate, clearly illegal’ culling of animals
WWF España, the Spanish section of the global environmetal NGO World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), has issued an urgent appeal to the president of Asturias to halt the scheduled launch on Friday of unlimited hunting of wolves in the northern region of Spain, including areas where wolves are protected from hunters under European regulations.
The environmental organization’s general secretary, Juan Carlos del Olmo, has written to Asturias president Javier Fernandez of the Socialist party and urged him to halt the opening to wolf hunters protected areas that constitute as much of as a third of the Asturias region’s territory. The region’s decision to move forward with open-hunting in order to cull the wolf population and satisfy the demands of livestock ranchers, said Del Olmo, allows hunters to kill any wolf — including pregnant females and cubs — and is “disproportionate, clearly illegal (and) would represent a historic setback in the conservation of nature in Spain.”
If the Asturian government does not stop the open-hunting of wolves in areas previously restricted to wolf-hunting in Asturias, del Olmo said, the WWF will appeal to the European Commission and the EU Environmental Attorney’s Office to prevent what it says amounts to a campaign of officially sanctioned extermination of a specific species within the Spanish region.
► Read More in Spanish at Europa Press, La Voz del Trubia and El Comercio …
► Read More in Spanish and sign WWF’s petition to stop wolf hunting in Asturias, here …
