The agrarian organization UGAM-COAG has considered "unacceptable" that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, "denies the real figures" of the wolf in Cantabria, while farmers continue to suffer "daily attacks, dead animals, and economic and emotional losses that no one else assumes," and has demanded from MITECO "rigor, respect, and real solutions."
"If the Ministry does not recognize the real magnitude of the problem, it will hardly be able to offer effective solutions," the organization pointed out this Friday in a statement, following Morán's words at the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) in Santander, where he warned that Spain will not send to Brussels the data provided by the autonomous communities about the wolf because they "distort" reality and respond to "political" criteria and not "scientific."
UGAM-COAG has expressed its "absolute concern and rejection" regarding these statements that, in its view, imply "publicly questioning" the official data on the wolf population presented by the Government of Cantabria, prepared "by public technicians and based on rigorous monitoring," it emphasized.
For the agrarian organization, this positioning of the Ministry represents "an irresponsible message for those who suffer the problem every day." "It is extremely serious that the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) questions figures that directly affect the farming families of Cantabria," it stressed.
In the same way, it qualifies as "intolerable" that the Government of Spain "refuses" to send the data submitted by the autonomous communities to the European Commission, in a context where the wolf population and the damages "continue to increase" in Cantabria and extensive farms are going through "a critical situation, without responses or institutional recognition."
Therefore, UGAM-COAG demands from MITECO "institutional respect" for the technical work of the autonomous communities, "scientific" and administrative "rigor" in the preparation and submission of the six-year report, "explicit recognition" of the "seriousness" of the damages suffered by the farms of Cantabria and the rest of the autonomous communities due to wolf attacks, as well as urgent and effective measures to contain a situation that they consider "already unsustainable."
"Extensive livestock farming cannot continue to be the silent victim of political decisions detached from the territory," the organization has stated.