Project

On 20th March, an amendment was approved in the Spanish Congress of Deputies that excluded the wolf population north of the Duero River from the List of Wild Species under Special Protection (LESRPE), thereby allowing regional governments to kill wolves. Several regional governments have already expressed their intention to execute dozens of specimens.

Parliamentary majorities cannot override scientific facts and evidence. The coexistence of large carnivores and livestock should be governed by promoting preventive measures, social mediation, education, and the swift assessment and payment of wolf-related damages.

This legislative offensive is accompanied by a disinformation strategy to influence public opinion through manipulation of facts and suppression of scientific information. This strategy aims to:

• Disguise the real objective: killing wolves. Euphemisms like “population controls” and “specimen extraction” are used.
• Conceal scientific evidence that identifies the species as an intrinsic and valuable element of ecosystems (regulating wild herbivore populations and pathogen prevalence).
• Convince that killing wolves will solve the problems threatening extensive livestock farming, which are actually rooted in economic markets and other socioeconomic and even cultural factors.
• Spread false alarms about risks to people living in wolf territories.

But this isn’t just about protecting wolves. The parliamentary manoeuvre breaks the legal frameworks for nature protection established in Law 42/2007 on Natural Heritage and Biodiversity, bypassing regulated public and administrative participation procedures and necessary technical and scientific endorsements. The inclusion of the wolf population north of the Duero in LESRPE in 2021 was supported by an opinion from the Scientific Committee chosen by regional governments and the Ministry of Environment through a fully regulated process that allowed civil society and regional administrations to participate – all within a framework endorsed by the Council of State. What has happened sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

This offensive is being led by those social sectors that champion scientific denialism and authoritarian methods. While climate change has been the main target of this scientific denialism, it now extends to denying the biodiversity crisis engulfing our planet. They’ve chosen the wolf, one of its main symbols. Exterminating wolves, as they intend, can never be the solution to problems in our relationship with the natural environment. On the contrary, it deepens the biodiversity crisis. This is an essentially anti-democratic and anti-scientific offensive.

We want this campaign to provide resources for all who love wolves and what they represent, regardless of our different perspectives. We want to bring science and conscience, ethics, democracy and justice to the forefront.