The two men who were caught hunting shearwaters in Charco del Palo last September have been sentenced to pay a fine of 1,120 euros each for a crime against wildlife and to bear the costs of the judicial procedure, as well as to serve a 16-month disqualification from hunting. The defendants themselves, who were to be tried this Monday before the Criminal Court Number 1 of Arrecife, have acknowledged the facts and have accepted the penalties after reaching an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office, so the hearing has not even been held.
In addition, they have also been convicted of a minor offense of animal abuse, due to the situation in which the ferret with which they were hunting shearwaters was found, for which they will have to pay another fine of 140 euros and are disqualified from owning animals for four months.
This has been made public by the NGO SEO/BirdLife, which was involved in the case as a popular accusation and has also had to accept this agreement so that the judgment of conformity could be issued, which is now final. However, the organization stresses that they were demanding a higher sentence -from two years of fine compared to the five months in which it has been set for the crime of hunting shearwaters, which would have meant about 4,000 euros more- and, above all, that civil liability was also included. Specifically, they point out that this would have meant the payment of another 2,400 euros, at a rate of 600 euros for each shearwater specimen they killed, which is what the Canarian regulations stipulate.
"It seemed to us the fairest thing to include that compensation because it is something that all Canarians have lost and we were claiming it not for ourselves, but for the whole society. It is money that they would have paid to the public coffers for the damages produced," explains the lawyer of the NGO, who points out that the Prosecutor's Office has opposed and finally they have not managed to include it in the agreement with the defendants.
Even so, the association celebrates this new ruling that condemns the hunting of shearwaters in Lanzarote again. "Illegal hunting is a practice that causes the death of more than 26 million birds a year in Europe and the Mediterranean basin alone. The exercise of the popular action of NGOs is allowing the promotion of legal proceedings that are opened for these crimes and contribute to the conservation of protected species acting in the courts," says the head of the legal program of SEO/BirdLife, David de la Bodega.
The events occurred last September, when a member of this association observed that several people were looking into several holes and cracks in the coastal area of Charco del Palo. After the warning, the Seprona of the Civil Guard surprised three people with a ferret and a sack containing four corpses of young specimens of Canarian Cory's shearwater, which led these three residents of Tinajo to recognize that they were hunting the species with the help of a mustelid. Therefore, they were arrested as alleged perpetrators of a crime relating to the protection of flora and fauna, although one of them was a minor and has not been tried in this case.
From SEO/BirdLife they explain that they have acted in this case as a popular accusation in the courts "with the aim of obtaining a sentence that allows to conserve the protected species, reflect the legal consequences of its illegal hunting and its nests and dissuade its commission". In fact, they emphasize that "this is one of the specific objectives of the LIFE Guardians of Nature project to improve the effectiveness of actions aimed at combating environmental crimes".