Santander, Jan 31 (EFE) it has increased compensation for damages to farmers.
According to the data offered at a press conference by the Minister of the Environment, Guillermo Blanco, the region, which has an estimated population of 180 wolves (21 packs), will incorporate nine municipalities into the areas with confirmed breeding of wolves and six will be added to areas with the presence of solitary specimens.
Cantabria has registered 8,186 attacks on cattle in the last four years and the new scale of damages, which includes damages caused by all wildlife but focuses on those caused by wolves, presents as new the payment of up to 400 euros per dead mastiff ; it incorporates the loss of profit for the females attacked and includes a new type of damage in honey production.
Since 2019, 5,215 files have been processed for damage to livestock, 4,580 of them by the Iberian wolf (87.82%); 517 from vulture attacks (9.92%) and 118 from bears (2.26%).
Among the damage caused by wolf attacks, the most affected species are sheep (four out of ten), followed by horses, cattle and goats.
The new scale of damages, which will be applied retroactively from January 1, 2023 and is the highest in Spain, simplifies the classification of livestock, which from now on will be divided by suitability (sheep, horses, cattle and goats). ) and not by race, as was done until now.
In addition, the new zoning of the wolf management plan has been presented, which is divided into three zones based on the presence of this species and attacks.
Following the presentation of these novelties, Blanco has insisted on the need to re-establish population control of the Iberian wolf in Cantabria, which has not existed since the wolf entered the list of protected species in September 2021, to limit its damage and the expansion.
For this reason, it has announced that in the near future the Ministry will publish new extraction orders, although it has recognized that they cannot be executed immediately because it has taken for granted that they will be appealed and “we will have to wait for the courts to rule”, as it has happened with those that have been published so far.
“It is not about paying for the wolf to feed,” warned the counselor, who pointed out that they have not yet received the go-ahead from the Ministry for Ecological Transition to the reports of extraction of the wolf and reiterated that “it has to change» its owner, Teresa Ribera.
In addition, he has called to “limit and stop the ultra-ecological and ultra-animalist drift in Europe.”