The Spanish parliament has voted through a measure that will in effect lift a ban on hunting wolves that was imposed in 2021.
A coalition led by the conservative People’s party, with the support of the far-right Vox party and Basque and Catalan nationalists, added an amendment to a law aimed at reducing Spain’s estimated 1.2bn kilograms of food waste.
Under the food waste plan, restaurants and cafes will have to provide free reusable or recyclable containers for customers to take home their leftovers, and shops will be encouraged to offer customers “ugly” fruit and vegetables and reduce prices on food nearing its best-before date.
The priority will be ensuring all food produced is used to feed people, so excess food will be donated to NGOs and food banks. If surplus fruit cannot be eaten or donated, it will be made into juices or jams. Any food that can be eaten by humans will be used for animal feed or, as a last resort, to make compost or biofuels.
Speaking on Thursday, Spain’s agriculture minister, Luis Planas, described the new law as an important step towards tackling the ethical, environmental and economic issue of food waste. “We live, unfortunately, in a world where hunger and malnutrition still exist, so wasting food is a very serious matter,” he said.
“I think the most expensive food is the food that ends up in the rubbish bin. We’ve said it before many times and that’s why it’s so important that we work with food producers and with distributors so that foods that are in good condition can be used to the basic end of human consumption. ‘We don’t throw anything away’ has been the motto of the campaigns we’ve put out and it will continue to be.”
However, the rightwing coalition took the opportunity to add the amendment, which says that wolves create food waste in the form of 4m kilograms of meat in the remains of the 14,000 sheep and cattle they allegedly kill each year.
In Castilla y León, the region with the largest wolf population, farmers’ organisations claim that in 2024 wolves killed about 6,000 head of livestock.
But critics have said there is no scientific basis for these figures. Juan Carlos del Olmo, the general secretary of the WWF wildlife charity in Spain, said after the vote: “Today the parliament has presided over what is a dark day for nature conservation in Spain, using an underhand method and without any scientific justification to leave wolves unprotected.”
The WWF said the decision was “based on political opportunism” and opened the way for the indiscriminate slaughter of wolves, and would undermine the progress made on coexistence between farming and wildlife.
“This is profoundly irresponsible,” said a source at Spain’s ministry for ecological transition. “The conflict between wildlife and humans is nothing new and the only policy that benefits everyone must be based on coexistence.”
The source said the vote was based on a denial of the facts. “Taking the wolf off the list of protected species in this way doesn’t help anyone.”
Figures released this week showed that the wolf population explosion predicted by the pro-hunting lobby has not materialised. Numbers have remained stable in the north-west, home to a majority of Spain’s estimated 2,500 wolves, an area where they have enjoyed protection only since 2021.
Isidre Gavín i Valls of the Catalan nationalist party Together for Catalonia, which supported the amendment, said the party was opposed to the killing of even one wolf, but said that until now “it’s the shepherds who lack protection”.
Last December the EU reduced the protected status of wolves from “strictly protected” to “protected” in a policy championed by the EU Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, after a wolf killed her family’s pet pony.
• This article and caption were amended on 21 March 2025. An earlier version stated that wolves created 14m kilograms of food waste a year. This should have said 4m.
