The reason that these two top courts stepped in was because the Junta de Castilla & León appealed against the Spanish Government’s decision in 2021 to prohibit it across Spain, declaring wolves as protected species.

The Junta de Castilla & León had introduced its Caza y Gestión Sostenible de los Recursos Cinegéticos de Castilla y León, which authorised the hunting of these animal in a “controlled manner” only with expressed permission from the administration; i.e., the Junta wanted to be the one to decide how many wolves could be shot.

The Spanish Government stepped in and annulled this law as it encroached upon state jurisdiction.

The response by the European Court of Justice to the regional government’s appeal was that this “wild canine cannot legally be declared a huntable species by a regional authority within a member state when its state of conservation is unfavourable.”

But this is not the first time that the ECJ had ruled in this manner as the Austrian region of Tyrol wanted to permit the killing of one particular wolf that had killed twenty sheep because European Law does not permit wolf hunting even though it be to control its population in the wild or to avoid damage to herds whilst its state of conservation is unfavourable, or in other words, in danger of extinction.

Ecologist associations in Spain, in light of these two, top court sentences have demanded that the PP (conservatives) withdraw from Parliament its law proposal that wants to remove the protection of wolves in the area north of the Duero. 

(News: Castilla & Leon)