Castilla and León has made effective its adhesion to the International Council for the Conservation of Game and Wildlife (CIC), just like the communities of Aragón and Extremadura, during the meeting of its Executive Committee held at the Monastery of San Pelayo, in Cevico Navero (Palencia). With this step, the Community seeks to get directly involved in this international advisory body and enhance the external projection of its game management model.
The CIC is the only hunting entity recognized as an observer at the UN, has diplomatic status, and cooperates with multilateral organizations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to "defend biodiversity through the sustainable use of wildlife," as the Board has stated in a statement collected by Europa Press.
Thanks to this integration, Castilla and León aims to give "greater international visibility" to its game management model, intervene in specialized technical forums, and support before European institutions the role of regulated hunting as an "instrument for wildlife management and rural development."
The Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Environment, and Environmental Policy, Joaquín Antonio Pino, has been present at the meeting, where he has highlighted the hunting system of the Community as an "example of compatibility between conservation, active land management, economic activity, and rural development."
In the working sessions and in the presentation of the game model of Castilla and León, the General Director of Hunting, Fishing, and the Rural Environment, Ignacio de la Fuente, who has accompanied the minister, has also participated.
Castilla and León, a hunting reference in Europe
Hunting is practiced in more than 88 percent of the territory of Castilla and León, through about 5,500 hunting grounds and its ten Regional Hunting Reserves, which places the Community among the most prominent hunting areas in the European continent.
The Board reminds that hunting activity is an "important source of income" for many rural areas, as it helps sustain employment and boosts accommodations, hospitality businesses, service companies, and other professionals linked to the rural environment.
In this context, the counselor has advanced that the regional government will reinforce the role of the Regional Reserves as one of the pillars of its policy on hunting, a public management system that allows "to organize the uses, carry out a technical monitoring of the populations and reconcile the conservation of wildlife with the generation of activity in rural areas."
In addition, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Environment and Environmental Policy has emphasized that it will promote actions to improve the social perception of hunting and bring to the forefront the work that, throughout the year, hunters, gamekeepers, managers, landowners, and owners carry out.
New measures to support hunting and wildlife management
Pino has detailed some of the first decisions adopted by the Board to facilitate hunting practice and optimize the management of wildlife. Among them are the modification of the digital sealing system, which will cease to be mandatory to become voluntary, and the authorization of the use of night thermal viewers in certain modalities of big game hunting.
The counselor has emphasized that the regulations must ensure "the conservation and compliance with the law," but, at the same time, allow for effective management. Therefore, with these changes, the aim is to "reduce unnecessary burdens, provide legal certainty, and offer useful tools to the sector."
The Board has added that it will maintain a constant dialogue with the federations, hunting organizations, landowners, owners, and professionals in the sector, in order for public policies to adjust to technical knowledge and the real needs of the territory.
"Castilla y León will defend hunting with arguments, knowledge, and concrete decisions. We are talking about an activity linked to our history, which generates wealth, contributes to wildlife management, and constitutes a tool to stabilize population, maintain economic activity, and offer a future to our towns," Pino concluded.