Approval for hunting protected species was given by the wrong institution, scientists demand a suspension

Montenegro’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management, headed by Vladimir Joković, approved the Regulation on hunting seasons without the consent of the institution the law requires — the Environmental Protection Agency — settling instead for the approval of the Ministry of Ecology, an investigation by Vijesti published this morning reveals.

The Regulation entered into force on September 24 and, from today, October 1, until December 31, allows the hunting of roe deer, calves and all categories of chamois — species that were previously under permanent protection. The obligation to obtain the Agency’s consent, as Vijesti writes, stems from the 2025 amendments to the Hunting Law, introduced by Joković’s own ministry: Article 35 provides that hunting seasons are set by the Ministry “with the consent of the state body competent for nature protection”, which is the Environmental Protection Agency.

A few days ago, the Ministry of Agriculture told Vijesti it had no obligation to seek the Agency’s opinion, but that “as the law provides, it obtains approval from the competent ministry”. The Minister of Ecology, Damjan Ćulafić, repeated yesterday on Vijesti Television’s “Boje jutra” program that his ministry had given its approval following an opinion from the European Commission and that there was no legal basis to refuse it; he announced that a forthcoming nature protection act would protect 540 animal species. Vijesti sent questions to the Agency yesterday asking whether it would launch an administrative dispute to annul the act, but the Agency did not respond.

The Agency had told Vijesti a few days earlier that it had not been consulted at all in the procedure of drafting the Regulation and had given neither a professional opinion, nor remarks, nor consent. More than a year earlier, it had even sent the Ministry of Agriculture the list of birds and mammals that should be excluded from hunting plans, with the recommendation that the chamois — whose hunting is now allowed — be protected permanently; from Joković’s ministry, according to the Agency, it never received a reply.

The strongest critical voice is raised by Dr. Vladimir Pešić, full professor of Animal Ecology at the University of Montenegro, who, as Vijesti reports, stresses that assessing animal numbers is not “a mechanical count in the field”: official statistics are collected by hunting associations and, in his view, are not scientifically valid. In the EU, he says, scientific institutions set the methodology and, if the population falls, hunting is banned completely — while inaccurate data, Pešić warns, can drive endangered species to local extinction. He calls on the institutions to halt the implementation of the Regulation urgently, until a serious, independent scientific analysis is carried out and a valid monitoring system is established.

The irony, Vijesti notes, is that the Ministry itself submitted to the Government two days ago the draft strategy for the development of hunting for 2026–2036, which lists among the system’s weaknesses “inaccurate and unreliable elementary data on the state of wildlife populations”.