Spain’s La Rioja region has become the first in the country to allow hunters to keep wolves’ heads as trophies since a ban on shooting the animals was lifted.
From October 1, hunters can shoot a wolf and keep its head or pelt as a souvenir — for only the €1,298.67 cost of the permit.
The order has prompted criticism from conservation groups as it could encourage more hunters and the number of wolves allowed to be killed is not capped in a clear way.
“This means opening the door to indiscriminate wolf hunting,” the WWF warned. Luis Suárez, the group’s conservation co-ordinator in Spain, said there was “no scientific justification to kill the few wolves that inhabit La Rioja”, describing the measure as “political and incomprehensible”.
WWF has filed a legal challenge with the superior court of La Rioja, asking for the order’s suspension. Other groups have also challenged it in court.
La Rioja holds one of Spain’s smallest wolf populations: a single resident pack and four that overlap with neighbouring Castilla y Leon. The region lies at the eastern fringe of the species’ range, considered vital for genetic mixing with wolves in Aragon and Catalonia, conservationists said.
Conservationists have protested against the end of the hunting ban
MARCOS DEL MAZO/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY IMAGES
Elsewhere in the north, culls are also under way. Asturias has authorised the killing of up to 53 wolves, or 15 per cent of its population. Cantabria has set a target of 41 animals, 20 per cent of its wolves, with more than half already shot by early September. Galicia included the wolf in its hunting orders for 2025, but a judge has temporarily blocked the measure.
Farmers’ groups backed the government’s lifting of a ban on shooting wolves this year in northern Spain. Wolves kill thousands of livestock each year. In Asturias, official figures recorded 2,126 attacks in a single year, killing 4,039 animals and costing farmers €1.54 million. Castilla y Leon reported 5,985 head of livestock lost to wolves in 2024 — almost 40 per cent more than in 2021. Nationally, estimates put the toll at 15,000 animals a year.
The Iberian wolf had been fully protected north of the Douro river since 2021, following a nationwide hunting ban. But on March 20 this year, Spain’s parliament, with votes from the conservative Popular Party, the hard-right Vox party and right-wing Basque nationalists and Catalan separatists, approved its removal from the protected list. The change was included in a food-waste law and opened the way for regional hunting orders such as La Rioja’s.