The National High Court has denied the precautionary suspension of the Order of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge requested by the Principality of Asturias, which includes the wolf from the northern area of ​​the Duero in the list of wild species under the Special Protection regime and, therefore, it prohibits its hunting.
Through an order, which is not final, the First Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber rejects the request of the Asturian autonomous community with the same arguments with which it denied on December 13 a similar request from Cantabria by not be able to rule on this precautionary measure at this procedural moment.
In both cases, the request for precautionary suspension was opposed by the central administration, the Confederation of Ecologists in Action-CODA and the Association for the Conservation and Study of the Iberian Wolf (ASCEL).
The Chamber considers that the Principality’s request to stay this order refers to substantive issues of the matter on which the court cannot rule in this “limited knowledge incident”, since it would be prejudging since they can only be analyzed with full guarantees of “contradiction, proof and fullness of knowledge”, in the main process.
For the magistrates, agreeing to the suspension of the order while the appeal filed against it is resolved would mean that the wolf could continue to be hunted in Asturias, which in their opinion would entail “an irreversible and irreparable damage.”
In addition, they recall in their resolution that, in the face of possible damage to livestock due to wolf attacks, if the application of the contested order continues to be applied, “economically reparable damages” would be caused, for which they could be subject to compensation through the channels legally established for this purpose.
In this case, the Chamber understands that the general interest of conserving the species must prevail over these possible economic damages and makes it clear that the owners and breeders of animals kept in the open air have a duty to protect them against predators to the extent possible. that is “necessary and possible”.
In addition, the order emphasizes that whenever it deals with a normative modification tending to establish a new legal regime in general, the jurisprudence requires to agree on a precautionary measure of suspension that in a clear and evident way irreversible damages are produced that do not concur in this case.
The order is not final and an appeal for reversal may be filed against it before the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National High Court within five days.
