In Portugal, 16 Spanish hunters kill 540 deer and wild boar, a massacre that has drawn the ire of the government: “It is an environmental crime”

A couple poses in front of the camera. Behind them the burning sky of a sunset that greets a day spent together, having fun doing something beautiful, pleasant. But what could be a postcard of a trip on the end of the year holidays, perhaps from a beach and a blue sea or a snowy mountain, is instead a horror scene: that couple posing smile in the middle of an expanse of dead animals. . Those people are two of the sixteen Spanish hunters who slaughtered deer and wild boar. It all happened in Portugal, in a hunting area in the center of the Iberian country.

The photos of the slaughter of wild animals have not gone unnoticed, however, but have been published and shared hundreds of times on social networks, arousing the anger of the population, as well as complaints from the authorities that accuse the 16 hunters Spaniards of “environmental crime”.

And now the case could also become a diplomatic case between Portugal and Spain: for the Portuguese Minister of the Environment, the brutal slaughter of these wild animals represents a “vile” gesture as well as an “environmental crime” that must be brought to court. . According to information released by the media, the massacre took place on a farm in the tourist hunting area of ​​Torrebela, near Azambuja, some 40 km from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, on December 17 and 18. Individual animals may hunt in that area, but in this case the majority of the area’s deer population appears to have died.

“The reports and news that we have about the indiscriminate killing of animals indicate that it has nothing to do with hunting, understood as a practice that can contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystems,” declared the Portuguese Minister of the Environment. announcing the opening of an investigation. The farm where the events occurred is a 1,100-hectare plot of land that is completely fenced and walled, so the 540 animals kept inside could not escape from their murderers.

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