The situation of the wolf in Galicia is that of an apparent contradiction: while the population of this animal remains stable, the attacks on the cattle attributed to it have multiplied. When the 2013-2015 census was made, the notifications of the farmers were around 600 a year, with between 1,200 and 1,500 affected cattle. Then the estimate was that 90 reproductive herds lived in the Galician mountains, composed of between 720 and 810 individuals. The most recent study, conducted between 2021 and 2022, concluded that the herds had gone to 93, which is considered a stability situation, and that this was equivalent to between 744 and 837 copies. However, the incidents had shot themselves. They went from 579 in 2013 to 1,332 in 2022, that is, they multiplied by more than two. And they have continued to increase, up to 2.127 record that scored the Xunta last year.
The Minister of Environment, Ángeles Vázquez, relates this rise to the ban, from 2021, to hunt the wolf, which is why he opened a battle, which is maintained today, with the central government to lower his level of protection. Vázquez is sure that this animal is behind the deaths of cattle notified and has come to ensure that there are farms that have ceased to be economically viable by the damages suffered. But experts do not agree on the analysis.
“Actually they don’t have to be wolf attacks, they can be dog,” replies the biologist Xabier Vázquez Pumariño. He also points out that he can be mixing predation-which the mate to eat-and scavenging-who feeds on an animal that is already dead. In both cases there will be traces of their dentelladas. Add an element that is strictly human: “In my opinion, there is a brutal fraud. There are people who know that the situation is in favor of paying them and putting deaths that are for other reasons. ” Another expert, Jorge Soto, of the Association for Conservation and Study of the Iberian Wolf (ASCEL), agrees: “What has really increased are the claims of the farmers because now the wolf is a protected species and the ministry [para la Transformación Ecológica] He has contributed a lot of money to Galicia and other autonomous communities for the financing of these compensation. ”
The funds to compensate for the attacks attributed to the wolf have grown up in these years. The owners of horses, goats, sheep and cows are delivered. These last two species are those that concentrate more than three quarters of the damages, according to the data accumulated by the Xunta since 2010. The budget for aid in 2021 was almost 650,000 euros, according to the Department of Environment. The one for the same purpose in 2024 had already grown 41%, to exceed 912,000 euros. The figure is similar in 2025. These increases are reflected in the amounts paid for each dead animal. In 2018, when the wolf did not have in Galicia the protection that prevents hunting, the payment for a sheep between one and six years was 102 euros; In 2025 there will be 182. In the case of a blonde cow between two and six years, in 2018 the compensation was 1,199 euros, which rose to 1,799 if the animal was from another native race. In 2025, they go to 1,905 and 2,859 euros, respectively.
The Minister of Environment repeats in its public events that there is a problem since the wolf was included in the list of wild species in Special Protection (Lesrpe) regime in 2021. From that time, he says, the notices for attacks increased in Galicia by 72% and the number of affected cattle, 57%. It defends, consequently, the greatest amount of aid. By 2025, in addition to the more than 900,000 euros for compensation, the Xunta has announced a line of 1.5 million euros to acquire protective dogs, electrical pastors and fences with electrified mesh; another, endowed with 400,000 euros, to install fixed fences; and one last, with 600,000 euros, to hire people who care for cattle.
The Xunta maintains, in response to questions of this writing, that the increase in attacks is related to the protection of the wolf because they cannot take “populations control measures” – that is, hunting. The consequence, reason is that the animal extends the areas in which it is present, something that the Galician government sees as a problem: “the absence of these control measures causes the presence of the wolf to reach more than 90% of the Galician territory, a distribution that was previously more located and that could be controlled with the adoption of dissuasive measures.” From there, says the Ministry of Environment, its insistence that protection is reduced “to guarantee the balance between this species and the livestock sector”.
The numbers of wolves hunted in whipped were not, however, high in Galicia before the ban. The Agricultural Union, which gives voice to farmers and battle also to reduce the protection of the species, collected in a report prepared in September 2023 that the management in the community in the previous decade had “pivoted” on compensation for damages and aid for prevention with public funds. Hunting occupied “a marginal position, a uniqueness with respect to the other autonomous communities.” I illustrated it with the fact that in the previous ten years there had been 60 authorized shakes and 11 wolves that had killed in them in Galicia, the last one in 2013. In Castilla y León, compared, the annual average was 105 copies dejected before the species entered the Lesrpe, while in Asturias it was 45 and in Cantabria, 35.
Jorge Soto, from Ascel, denies that in such a short time – the effective prohibition of hunting the wolf began in September 2021 – the impact on a multiplication of the attacks could have been noticed. He insists that what happens is that there is a confusion between real attacks and the statistics of the notices. He believes that the Xunta should “establish whether these statistics are solid or fruit of human picaresque” to verify that compensation are paid in adequate cases and claims that DNA tests are done to check if the saliva that appears in dead animals is wolf or dogs. “Where this has been done (Catalonia, Italy, Germany, etc.) it has been proven that a high percentage of claims are falsely attributed to wolves and many others, picaresque,” he says.
Attribution problems
On this aspect Vázquez Pumariño also extends, which explains that genetic studies, today, are cheap and adds that, even if an animal appears with wolf or dog bites, it would be to be determined if it was an attack or found them dead for other reasons. The biologist explains that, within the population of Lobos, which considers that it remains stable in Galicia, there are individuals who are not integrated into a pack. Those, he says, “they could cause more damage to sites populated by humans.” But these specimens are about to evaluate and need to determine how many are and how they are behaving.
The study in charge of the Xunta also indicates that there is an abundance of food for the wolf in the mountains: the populations of ungulates and, specifically of wild boars – which environment authorized to hunt without limit this season – are in good condition. Jorge Soto considers that this is another reason to think that the situation of the wolf is not favorable in Galicia. The regional government concludes that it is, but this expert considers that determining it does not correspond to the Xunta, but that it is a six -year evaluation By Member State of the European Union. One of the premises to conclude that the situation is favorable, he adds, is that the species is “a vital component and play an ecological role in the ecosystems.” “And it is not. If there is such a significant recovery of populations of wild ungulates (roese, wild boars and deer), which is what the wolves eat preferably, then there is not sufficient number of wolves to effectively regulate those populations, ”
Both Soto and Vázquez Pumariño point to a possible illegal wolves. The latter states that, if he was certain that there are really more wolf attacks, which are not dogs or scavenging, what he would think is that there is a lot of poaching. “It is contraintuitive, but there is a lot of bibliography in Europe and the United States that, when there is more hunting, it is poaching or legal, individuals are killed within the herds and they are unstructured. When that happens, they have more difficulty to attack wild animals and go to domestic, which are the last resort because they know it is a risk, ”he says. The conclusion is that hunting wolves can actually lead to an increase in their attacks.
The Xunta and its attack verification system
The Xunta indicates that the procedure for communicating attacks establishes that they should be notified in the following 24 hours when won in intensive regime. The deadline is 72 hours in semi -expansive or extensive. The owners can call 011 for it. An environmental agent then moves to the place to check the damage.
Regarding the measures to control that there is no fraud, the Department of Environment ensures that there is “a constant evaluation and monitoring of the aid system” to “analyze the problems that originate” and the “maintenance of the quality of the damage verification system”. It is done in provincial commissions, but if necessary, the communicated damages and associated applications are reviewed in an assessment commission within natural heritage in each territory. In this body there are representatives of Natural Heritage, the Biodiversity or Hunting Section and personnel of the Environment Agents. The meetings are attended as veterinary advisors, experts in the field and representatives of the livestock sector, he adds.
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