For some time there has been an open debate in Asturias over the principality’s authorization to hunt cormorants. The rationale for this is that the presence of these animals aggravates the low trout and salmon populations. To allow this hunt, the Asturias government relies on various scientific reports that environmental groups claim have not had great success. To understand the debate, it is best to first know how hunting is regulated in our country.
It is a regional competition in Spain, so there are 15 regional hunting laws. Only Madrid and Catalonia do not have it and are subject to Law 1/1970, namely the Provincial Hunting Law 1970.
From the beginning and at the time it was written, it seems reasonable to think that it deserves an update, among other things, as it coexists with regional laws or much later regulations such as the Natural Heritage and Biodiversity Law 42/2007.
All hunting laws should be regulated by technical plans that guarantee the conservation and sustainability of biodiversity as well as regulating the management of fishing resources. Therefore, national and regional laws and hunting plans envision the hunter as an environmental hunter actor whose task is not only to hunt but also to ensure the conservation, maintenance and growth of the animal population and the habitat in which they live. The well-known and widely talked about sustainability, which includes the UN 2030 agenda, also talks about this.
This is why Asturias environmental organizations are requesting these scientific reports, as they consider, among other things, that they are not the main cause of the low fish population when it comes to cormorants. In any case, it is clear that the reports should be published because the only data known to date is that more than 3,500 cormorants have been hunted in recent years.