The events took place in February 2019 a farm integrated into a small game reserve which, as stated in the penalty, belongs to the Natura 2000 network. The suspect hunted and shot partridges with bait between February 10 and March 5, 2019 (the exact date is unknown) with the intention of causing the death of a lynx. which approached the cage of the male partridge call.”
The hunter I was fully aware that there were lynx on the property and that these needed to be protected; Yet, in the corpse of the Iberian lynx, more than 80 cartridge projectiles were located in the cranial, thoracic region, forelimbs and, in a smaller quantity, in the caudal region and hindlimbs.
The protection of the Iberian lynx
An environmental group from Extremadura, which has been involved in the criminal case since the criminal case death of an Iberian lynx named Cherubín at the hands of a hunterand which was subsequently hidden by one of its employees to conceal his death, has received with satisfaction the affirmative judgment of the Third Department of the Provincial Court of Badajoz, even though the appeal that was not accepted at the same time was filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office , because it understood that there was direct fraud and not ultimate fraud, thus reducing the duration of the prison sentence imposed by the Criminal Court sentence of Don Benito.
It should be recalled that the events date back to February-March 2019, when the accused Manuel RL, sentenced to two years and one day in prison, shot an Iberian lynx while hunting for pellets by the lure technique, that is, displaying a caged partridge to attract other partridges and shooting them when they are within range.
In the present case The hunter shot the lynx when it attacked the claim, knowing it was a protected speciessince the government of Extremadura informed them that Iberian lynx had been reintroduced to their farm as part of a European program to recover the world’s most endangered feline.
Once downed the lynx and with the intention of concealing the evidence of the crime He ordered one of his workers to bury it on the neighbor’s property, knowing that lynx usually carry geolocators for monitoring. Therefore, the worker, Juan José GM, as the perpetrator of a crime of concealment, is also sentenced to imprisonment for 1 year and six months.
However, the environmentalists asked for higher sentences for both convicts (three years and six months in prison and two years in prison respectively). the intentional killing of an animal that is seriously threatened with extinctionwhich also occurred in a protected area should be punished more severely than hitherto, as much economic and human effort has been made to reintroduce this species to places where it has traditionally lived and from which it has unfortunately disappeared Extremadura .
Unfortunately, the body of another lynx named Quitapón, brother of the previous one, who disappeared under similar circumstances and in the same area, could not be found. In any case, the environmental group of Extremadura would like to thank the Service for the Protection of Nature of the Guardia Civil (SEPRONA) excellent work in clarifying the facts and arresting the two people involvedwith a very important commitment of troops, who did not give up their efforts to clarify the facts until the end.
Extremadura’s environmental activists are demanding more staff and resources for the many crimes against wildlife and the environment are committed and in some cases go unpunishedprecisely because the investigating officers do not have the resources and special knowledge to investigate the facts, as unfortunately happened with regard to the dog fights organized during the pandemic and the criminal case for which had to be archived and dismissed by the police due to inadequate instructions Civil Guard.