Europatropical.net reports: The Civil Guard investigates a hunter who killed a Bonelli’s Eagle in a Loja hunting ground
MOTRIL. The Bonelli’s Eagle (Hieraetus fasciatus) is a Threatened Species and listed as a species vulnerable to extinction.
▪ After shooting the eagle, the investigated man took off the GPS transmitter that he was wearing and threw it into the Iznájar lake and then threw the bird’s corpse into a garbage container.
▪ In this operation environmental agents from Andalucía, agents and a dog guide from the Environment and Water Agency (AMAYA), and a forest guard from the Junta de Andalucía have collaborated with SEPRONA.
The Civil Guard has investigated a hunter from Malaga, a forty-six-year-old from Archidona, as the alleged perpetrator of a crime related to the protection of flora and fauna after shooting down a Bonelli’s Eagle, which is included in the Andalusian Catalogue of Threatened Species as a species vulnerable to extinction, in a Loja hunting ground.
The eagle was killed on August 27th and its death was reported by the Group for the Rehabilitation of Autochthonous Fauna and its Habitat (GREFA) before the Nature Protection Service (SEPRONA) of the Civil Guard of Granada, and the The Environmental Judicial Police Team took over the investigation.
The killed specimen, named “Nicasio”, had been marked on May 7th in its nest in Loja with a GPS transmitter within the actions of the Aquila a-Life project in Andalucía, a project in which GREFA participates in collaboration with the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, the Junta de Andalucía and Soul Natura.
In its complaint, GREFA specified that the data provided by the eagle’s GPS indicated that the animal was floating on the tail of the Iznájar reservoir, near a bridge on the A-333 road.
A patrol from the Seprona de Loja managed to locate the GPS device floating in the swamp, but not the eagle.
Meanwhile the agents of the Environmental Judicial Police Team had followed the route traced by the GPS of the killed specimen, especially the points between 11:53 and 12:23 hours on August 27th, which are the ones that show that an incident had occurred with the animal, and they specified that the death had occurred in a Loja hunting ground and also located two points in which there were Bonelli’s Eagle feathers, one next to a hunting post of said Preserve and another next to the place where the hunters park their vehicles.
Subsequent investigations by the Civil Guard managed to identify the alleged perpetrator of the shots and this, knowing he had been identified, voluntarily presented himself at the SEPRONA offices of the Granada Command and confessed that he accidentally shot the eagle and that when he verified that the bird was carrying placed a GPS transmitter, he took it off and threw it into the Iznájar swamp and then threw the bird into a garbage container.
Andalusian environmental agents, agents and a dog guide from the Environment and Water Agency (AMAYA), and a forest guard from the Andalusian Government have collaborated with SEPRONA in this operation.
We await the outcome of the prosecution and will advise members as soon as we know more.
Article translated from Europatropical.net and a link to the original (Spanish) article is here.