With the aim of dismantling the hoaxes generated by hunters, the animal welfare group, AnimaNaturalis, has offered 3,000 euro to the first person who exposes any specific measure of the current Valencian Law on Animal Welfare that threatens and prevents the development of hunting.
Thousands of hunters demonstrated this Saturday in Valencia against the animal welfare laws: “They are repressive and regressive laws based on punitive populism,” argued Manuel Gallardo, the president of the Royal Spanish Hunting Federation.
In response, confident that they will not end up three grand out of pocket, Aïda Gascón, director of AnimaNaturalis in Spain, argued, “The hunting sector is only looking for a scapegoat in the animal sector to justify the significant decrease in the number of hunting licences and to ask for even more public money for its promotion”.
Whoever wants to access the 3,000 euro will have to demonstrate in a justified and documented way that the current Valencian law threatens and prevents hunting activity, either legally or with homologous practical cases from other CCAAs that have updated their legislative framework on animal welfare.
Hunting is an activity in clear decline in the Valencian Community, which has fallen by 40% in the last 15 years. “That is why they need to take to the streets to try to show that they are many, when the reality is that with each passing year they are fewer,” says Gascón.
The number of hunters in the Valencian Community has been in decline for more than three decades. In 2021 there were a total of 35,000 hunters in the community, while in 1990, 32 years ago, this figure was 114,000, according to data from the General Directorate of Natural Environment and Environmental Assessment of the Generalitat Valenciana.
At the end of April, AnimaNaturalis and CAS International published a pioneering investigation to show the horror of hunting, including images showing badly injured dogs, stabbings, dying game animals, hunters stitching up their dogs’ wounds without veterinary supervision, and even the use of illegal drugs.
Precisely because of the brutality that it entails and the possibility of suffering injuries and confrontations with other animals, the use of dogs in hunts in the open field is prohibited in most EU states. Apart from Spain, dogs can only be used in hunts in Portugal and France.
“Even though they try to sell it as wildlife management, hunting is nothing more than a recreational activity for people who enjoy harassing and killing animals,” says Gascón.
This money is being donated by an anonymous donor through AnimaNaturalis.
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