Since the beginning of July, another semi-political, perhaps entirely environmental, but surely scandalous issue has taken place in the eye of the media and public attention – the proposed amendments to the Hunting and Game Protection Act. They were filed by members of the ruling coalition.
If approved, the changes will allow private formations or single individuals to steward more than 140 game-breeding areas and 36 limited-access hunting territories, previously under the jurisdiction of the state. They will be conferred for a period of 15 years and the selection of concessionaires requires an open competition, organised by the State Forestry Agency (SFA), Dnevnik daily reported. All limited-access territories will be managed through public-private partnerships. One of the consequences of the proposed amendments will be that the concession contracts of all companies that currently operate in the hunting reserves will be terminated, and the companies will have to re-apply for new concessions.
Yet, critics of the amendments suggest that in addition to breaching the European Wild Birds Directive and Bulgaria’s Biodiversity Act, the legal changes would foster corruption.
A one-month extension of the waterfowl birds hunting season was also proposed, from January 31 to February 28, which will disturb their mating habits, disorientate the migratory birds and limit their chances of survival. In general, hunting of migratory game and protected species is not unusual in Bulgaria, therefore, the state should first solve the problem of widespread poaching and then propose an extension of the hunting season, Dnevnik daily commented.
In the process of heated debates, Socialist member of Parliament (MP) Georgi Yuroukov, proposed that all current concessionaires who up to now have invested more than half a million leva in hunting reserves, should be able to manage them for a further 15 years, without having to compete for them again. Yuroukov was quoted by Dnevnik daily as saying that should any of the businessmen decide to sue the state for financial losses, the state would be in no position to reimburse them. The MP did not specify on what grounds the businessmen would sue the state, if such clause was not indicated in their initial contracts.
Yunal Tassim, a MP from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, was quoted by Dnevnik daily as saying that Yuroukov’s arguments for lawsuits against the state were unfounded. Nobody had seen the contracts in question, Tassim said. It was absurd to establish privileges with a law, the MP has said. Tassim has alluded in previous interviews that managing contracts were normally renewed every year, and politicians who backed Yuroukov’s proposal could not explain why privileges should be given to people who by default should have foreseen how much money to invest in a one-year period.
Environmentalists from To Sustain the Nature in Bulgaria (SNB) coalition of NGOs have also raised another problematic issue, that if the amendments were to pass, the chairperson of the National Hunting and Fishing Association (NHFA) would be granted full rights to determine the operation areas of all hunting associations, to register them and represent them in the SFA.
Subsequently, NHFA will be the only organisation – partner of the state agency in protection and management of the game in Bulgaria. This in itself implies discriminatory treatment of all existing hunting and environmental organisations, SNB said in a media statement.
Currently, hunting associations manage 85 per cent of all hunting territories, according to Dnevnik daily. Some of them are independent formations, some are members of the Bulgarian hunting union. With the proposed amendments, the independent groups will be broken off and their managed territories annexed to the neighbouring hunting associations. Dnevnik daily called the process “forcibly imposed monopolism.”
State-regulated hunting reserves would be allowed to enter agreements with legal entities and that way some individuals would be granted the right to sign contracts without transparency. Dnevnik daily commented that the whole procedure would thrust all state reserves into the hands of clique of oligarchs, moreover, with the help of a state subsidy.
To protest against the proposed amendments, hunters from the entire country united in a coalition and are planning stage a protest in front of Parliament on September 10.
Meanwhile, President Georgi Purvanov, himself an avid hunter, voiced his opinion regarding the amendments. During a hunters fair near Gabrovo, Purvanov urged all MPs to vote in favour of the amendments, because the changes of the existing law would “regulate in a modern and European way the spirit of our tradition.”
