About 300 people gathered this Saturday, September 20, in front of the Island Council of Lanzarote in defense of hunting activity and in protest of what they consider an unfair treatment, full of deceptions, cuts and lack of dialogue by the president Oswaldo Betancort.
During the event, a manifesto was signed that will be delivered to the island corporation, which includes six key demands of the group. Among them are: that weather alerts are not used as a pretext to cancel hunting days without applying the same criteria to other outdoor sports, that suspended days are automatically rescheduled, that the sector has at least 50% representation in the Island Hunting Council, and that traditional areas and training camps prohibited in this legislature are recovered.
The PSOE councilor in the Cabildo, Benjamín Perdomo, was present at the rally to show his support for the hunters and has harshly criticized the actions of the current president. “This year there have been four fewer days of rabbit hunting and five fewer days of partridge hunting, and yet Oswaldo appeared in a video with the Minister of the Government of the Canary Islands announcing that the days would be extended because there was a plague. That is a lie and a new deception to a sector that deserves respect,” he denounced.
Perdomo also lamented that, in the last five weeks, the group has requested up to seven meetings without receiving a response. “And now, only after the mobilization of 300 hunters, they announce that they will open Haría. That is not respect, it is pure opportunism,” he stated.
The socialist councilor also denounced the “constant improvisation” of the island government, as demonstrated —he said— by the unjustified delay of a month in the opening of the training camp, scheduled for March, or by the closure of the cross-country field for partridge hunters, allowed in the previous legislature.
“The hunting sector has historically known how to coexist with the natural environment and build bridges with the primary sector. Criminalizing and attacking this activity makes no sense. What is needed is to provide solutions, open dialogue and guarantee certainties. What is not needed is to continue deceiving hunters, farmers, or the residents of this island,” Perdomo concluded.
