“We need the wolf.” The debate in Andalusia concerning the restoration of this predator is reopened | Andalusia information | EUROtoday

The newest information based the disappearance of the Iberian wolf in Andalusia datan in 2014. It was the primary yr wherein no hint, traces or excrement that witnessed the presence of a species that was already then in its historic minimal was detected. In July 2023, the Wolf Monitoring and Conservation Program, at regional scope, licensed the absence of “indication of the presence of wolf in Andalusia” and in 2024 the Board formalized its extinction earlier than the Flora and Fauna Committees and the Andalusian of Biodiversity. However, a yr later, the federal government of Juan Manuel Moreno has not launched the reintroduction program to which it has been pressured by having declared that species extinct. A requirement that has been claiming conservation and environmental teams for many years and the one which has simply been added the Andalusian PSOE, however which has the frontal opposition of farmers and hunters, whose political affect when making selections is decisive on this group.

“The population of Lobos de Sierra Morena is the only one in Europe that has disappeared and it is time to start working in its recovery,” says Luis Suarez, of WWF, who warns that the Board is sure by legislation to the restoration of extinct species. An obligation that the Andalusian socialists have simply remembered this week within the regional Parliament the place they’ve urged the Ministry of Environment to formally declare the wolf as an extinct species in the neighborhood, an indispensable step to undertake restoration applications. “The PP refuses to recognize the extinction, because accepting it would imply that it has made poor management and face the hypothetical pressure of sectors such as the livestock and the hunting,” says the deputy of the PSOE-A, Antonio Ruiz.

The Minister of Sustainability and Environment, Catalina García, replied that after the belief of a report in 2023 to judge the demographic and inhabitants standing of the subspecies of the wolf in the neighborhood, it was confirmed that the canid “is extinguished in a wild state in Andalusia and the Sierra Morena team, from 2015 ″, conclusions that were communicated to the two mandatory public participation bodies: The Flora and Fauna Committee, in May 2024, and the Andalusian Biodiversity Council, in November of the same year. the Board that they will not initiate their reintroduction. “” It is not an issue that is a priority for this government, “he says.

Ecologists attract attention to how the different initiatives to stop the eradication of the wolf adopted by the regional administration in recent years have been declining. “Already with the socialist government, Life projects were launched, similar to those of the Lynx, to disseminate the benefits of the wolf in the municipalities where there could be a greater presence, but, meanwhile, it was extinguished, something that was a contradiction,” recalls Juan Clavero, historical activist of Ecologists in Action. “The PSOE must have declared the wolf as a species in danger of extinction, but did not do so and with the PP the situation has worsened more,” says Felipe Román, biologist and president of the Andalusian Lobo Group. In addition to the Life Project, in 2018 the Board launched a conservation plan, but in 2021 the Andalusian Executive, with Moreno in front, voted against granting a special protection regime and adhered to the request of other communities where there is presence of the wolf to ask Europe to decrease its protection.

Absence of consensus

“We need the wolf,” Román emphasizes. Conservationists defend the need for their recovery in the community as an essential element to return the balance in an ecosystem in which the absence of predators has increased the number of deer or wild boars. They also attract attention to the sanitary role of this predator for the control of diseases that could be transmitted to cattle.

The attitude of conservationists is not naif and are aware that this species is a threat when it attacks cattle and recognizes that in northern Spain it is generating great social conflict, so they demand that any reintroduction program be carried out guaranteeing a “general consensus”. “Reintroduction is of no use, if there’s not a social, political and financial framework that permits it earlier than,” says Roldan. Something that, for the moment, does not seem to be possible due to the frontal opposition of the livestock sector and, in a less belligerent way, of the hunters. “I solely noticed my father cry when the wolves killed his sheep sooner or later and one no,” explains Agustín González, responsible for extensive livestock of agri -food cooperatives, an organization that, together with COAG and ASAJA, signed in 2024 a document in which in one of its points they requested the exit of this canid of the list of species in special protection regime. The farmers deny not only that the wolf is a threatened species and, therefore, defend their hunt, but the arguments of the environmentalists. “The wolf doesn’t kill to eat, kill for killing and hopefully he made pure choice and eaten the sick animals, however first he prefers to hunt a sheep than a wild boar,” says González.

A reflection shared by Antonio Punzano, head of livestock of Coag, who warns that the reappearance of the wolf in Andalusia would cause the extinction of extensive livestock. “It would disappear, it’s the weakest animal of the chain and within the scenario the place in depth livestock is, with out generational relay, reintroducing to the wolf is an unassumable threat.”

Natural recovery

From the Andalusian federation of searching are usually not so combative, however additionally they don’t defend the reintroduction of the wolf. “Compared to other populations from the rest of Europe, the expansion rate in the Peninsula is minimal,” says Isabel Salado, a researcher on the Doñana Biological Station and has participated in a examine on the genome of the Iberian wolf.

Something that appears sophisticated after Congress accepted within the Food Waste Law, due to a PP and Vox subterfuge, the permission for wolves to the north of the Duero. Therefore, conservationists demand, it is very important promote applications that, as within the case of the lynx, enable recovering a species in extinction.

An initiative that could possibly be developed due to the technique for the conservation and administration of the wolf and its coexistence with the actions of the agricultural setting, which accepted the Ministry of Ecological Transition in 2022, endowed with funds for the communities that need to develop it, however from which, as Clavero emphasizes, “the Board has disregarded”. In return, Roldán claims the PSOE. “The wolf has the right to exist and the PSOE should be consistent and present the unconstitutional resource to the food waste law and catalog it from the Government as a vulnerable species, because the regime it has in Andalusia is insufficient,” warns the biologist on the inclusion of the wolf within the Andalusian record of untamed species in particular safety, safety that ecologists declare that ecologists declare that ecologists declare improve. Suarez goes one step additional: “Although there is no political will, it is a legal obligation and the Board is not working on a serious proposal to recover the population of Wolf. In a community that says it is at the forefront of conservationism, if you want to demonstrate it, you must play with all the pieces.”