Animal and environmental organizations have made public this Thursday their rejection of the draft Law on Hunting and River Fishing that the Community of Madrid is processing, considering that it will represent an "unprecedented setback" in terms of environmental protection, animal welfare, and citizens' rights by allowing, according to them, "to hunt everything, always, and by any means".
In a joint statement, the Madrid Environmental Platform, Empathy Association, and Platform No to Hunting maintain that the future regulation has been drafted "at the behest of the hunting lobby," a group that, they recall, represents "barely 0.63% of the Madrid population" but controls "more than 70% of the regional territory."
Among their main objections, the entities criticize the increase in the number of huntable species from 24 to 31, incorporating aquatic and wading birds "in decline or with scarce presence" in the Community of Madrid, in addition to extending the hunting seasons for large and small game "without real respite for the fauna."
Likewise, they condemn the authorization of the use of drones, thermal cameras, and night vision devices to locate animals, the recovery of hunting methods already prohibited "for their cruelty," such as pigeon hunting with decoys and partridge hunting with calls, and the permission to use up to 500 pack dogs per hunt.
They also warn that the draft opens the door to limiting public access to public roads and riverbanks during hunting days and to leaving the planning and supervision of the activity "to the owners of hunting grounds themselves, without scientific audit or public control."
The organizations maintain that the regional government has left other users of the natural environment out of the law-making process and assert that "public territory cannot be handed over exclusively to an armed minority."
In response to this situation, they have called a demonstration for May 30, starting in Plaza del Callao and ending at the headquarters of the Ministry of Environment, Agriculture, and Interior. They assure that more than a hundred environmental, animal welfare, and social groups from all over the country have already joined the call.
The first regional law for the hunting sector
The Governing Council of the Community of Madrid gave the green light on March 25 to the Hunting and Fishing Bill, with the stated objective of reinforcing the legal certainty of the sector and the protection of the natural environment, by setting minimum hunting grounds and population control plans. The text is still pending debate and approval in the Assembly of Madrid.
The regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, defended at the time that it is "the first law for the sector in the history of the Community of Madrid" and that it will serve to "boost the sector" and will serve as "support and control" of the health of ecosystems, the population control of species and monitoring of damage to agriculture, traffic accidents or the transmission of diseases.
Currently, around 69% of Madrid's territory —576,000 hectares— is classified as hunting land, with about 50,000 active hunting licenses. As for fishing, the region has about 46,000 active licenses and has 24 regulated stretches covering almost 130 kilometers, managed in part in collaboration with city councils and other local entities.