Court stops tenders for wild sheep, goats

İdris Emen - KONYA

A local court has decided to stay the execution of the hunting tenders for four Anatolian Mountain sheep and three wild goats in the Central Anatolian provinces of Konya and Karaman.

The hunting tenders were in violation of the Animal Protection Law, the Land Hunting Law and international conventions, said Ayşegül Başkoçak Çiftci, a lawyer who filed two lawsuits on behalf of the Animal Protection Association.

Anatolian Mountain sheep is a Türkiye-specific species and the wild goat is endangered in Europe, the lawyer said, requesting that the tenders were canceled.

The Agriculture and Forestry Ministry had announced that the hunting tenders will be held on Oct. 17 in seven lots.

With the interim decisions taken on Oct. 10, the court decided to stay the execution of the hunting auctions.

The efforts to control the extinction of Anatolian Mountain sheep, which started towards the end of the 1960s, have begun to bear fruit in recent years with production and natural habitat creation activities.

Anatolian Mountain sheep, whose reproduction processes had been carried out in the central Anatolian province of Konya, had been released to nature to adapt to the wild environment.

Mucur district of Kırşehir was chosen as the place to host this work, which started in the central Anatolian province of Karaman and continued in the eastern province of Kahramanmaraş, the central Anatolian provinces of Eskişehir and Afyon.

Last year, a local court has issued a stay of execution upon an appeal by the Turkish Vegan Association regarding a tender opened by the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry that would have allowed the hunting of Anatolian Mountain sheep, a species unique to Türkiye.

The Anatolian Mountain sheep is one of the two wild sheep species in Türkiye. It lives in Anatolia all year round.