Wood grouse to be hunted in Romania after sudden lifting of decade-long ban

Eager hunters will once again be able to hunt the western capercaillie, or wood grouse, in Romania after the Environment Ministry lifted a decade-long ban prohibiting it.

Between September and November of this year, 239 western capercaillies (tetrao urogallus) will be hunted, according to the ministry’s regulations. The highest share of that number, 38, can be found in Harghita, environment minister Tanczos Barna's home county, while hunters in other counties can hunt only two or three specimens.

Inquiries made by journalists regarding the methodology used to determine the abovementioned shares were met with silence from the ministry or hunters’ associations. Those who did answer, like the Dâmbovița hunters’ association, said that they have no estimate of the local capercaillie population. Others were surprised by the fact that the ministry permitted the hunt now, in the autumn, seeing as hunting usually takes place in the spring, regardless of the targeted species.

Environmental groups oppose lifting the ban on hunting capercaillies in Romania and cite the lack of precise data. “If you don’t know how many chickens you have in your yard, you don’t know how many you can cook,” Emanuel Ștefan Baltag, president of the Romanian Ornithological Society, told Digi24. He also argued that the wood grouse is a rare species and that too few males exist for the population to recover quickly.

Agent Green, one of the most well-known environmental NGOs in Romania, says that the hunting of Romanian wood grouses is just another attempt at destroying the few virgin Carpathian forests that still exist. “The mountain grouse population is in decline in the Carpathian mountains, precisely because of the massive disturbance caused by man, especially through logging,” the association said in a statement.

The environment minister had previously given assurances that only 1% of the capercaillies registered in the last years will be made available for hunting.

(Photo source: Silviu Matei | Dreamstime.com)