Spain, rabbit landtoday he pays to get them off his back. When the Phoenicians set foot on our coasts, they saw ears and burrows before cities and that is how they named the peninsula, i‑spn‑yaa curious place name that ended up as Hispania. Or so the theory goes, one of many.
Now Albacete has set up a subsidy system so that hunting societies contain an overpopulation that destroy their crops. The real problem is not only about how many are killed, but what is done with them afterwards and why the model produces plagues again and again.
A plague that concentrates. The province of Albacete is experiencing a paradox that is actually repeated throughout half the country. On the one hand, the wild rabbit is listed as an endangered species in many habitats; on the other, it is a plague on agricultural strips and on the margins of large infrastructures. In Castilla-La Mancha, hundreds of thousands of rabbits are estimated to be captured each year; only so far in 2026 are they talking about 603,000 copiesand 30% of them leave the fields of Albacete.
The regional administration has been chaining “hunting emergency” resolutions for years. That is, we seek to find the key between a balance of fauna and environmental regulation. And, at least in La Mancha, Albacete, Cuenca and Toledo, they have not been able to find it. Because more than a homogeneous explosion we are talking about hot spots next to roads, railway lines, intensive irrigation and protected spaces where the rabbit finds shelter, food and the absence of predators.
How the half million works. This is not the wild western. Let no one expect an envelope for each animal killed. The Albacete Provincial Council has announced a line of subsidies amounting to 500,000 euros aimed at local non-profit hunting societies. Of course, based in the province. Each entity can request up to 9,000 eurosonly once, for a specific project linked to wild rabbit damage control.
The money is processed electronically, through the provincial electronic headquarters, between July 21 and August 10, 2026; The companies justify the actions until October 31. And this shock plan does not clash with other aid: the call makes it possible to make this aid compatible with other public lines, as long as they are aimed at the same purpose. Because? Because it fits with the four million euro regional plan for rabbit overpopulation.
Is it necessary to kill? In the past, this “social hunting” received local and even private help from crop protectors. Now alternatives are being sought: the village clubs insist on fencing, hunting nurseries and management of water and food points for wildlife. That is, it should be financed around the infrastructure around the rabbit and the verb “kill” is the last option. And if there is only one alternative, killing will always be that savagery that no authority should authorize.
The dominant model continues to be intensive hunting, with a shotgun, ferret and nets in extended periods thanks to the emergency declarations from some regions. In Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha, this shock works in the short term: in Aragon, between 2019 and 2021, a control plan eliminated 1.8 million rabbits in 125 municipalities. Despite the 18 measurementsIn Castilla-La Mancha, more than 46% of the territory is affected by this plague, “which translates into some 364 municipalities with direct damage.”
Save them to kill them. WWF and other research teams have been pointing out for years that mass hunting reduces damage during the campaign, but the following year the effect fades and the population grows again. If there is shelter and food, there is overpopulation. And the problem comes from afar, from the dynamics of crops with larger and more homogeneous farm surfaces, with less mosaic of crops, fewer boundaries and less presence of natural predators. The ancient stone walls served as homes, but also as regional limiters. Now the rabbit runs free in no man’s land.
Associations like PACMA they add also another nuance, remembering that the Generalitat of Catalonia authorized the release of more than 12,000 rabbits from hunting farms to repopulate hunting reserves in 2021, and that the same administration later declared the hunting emergency and the use of biocides such as aluminum phosphide. Inflate the population first and then resorting to massacres when the population overflows is, to say the least, counterproductive.
What do you do with so much rabbit?. The great unknown is the same as always. The emergency resolutions and the regional shock plan already include the possibility of marketing the meat of captured rabbits, as long as they are immediately slaughtered and delivered to authorized wild game handling establishments with health guarantees. This is the responsible thing to do, not leave them stranded.
own manchego plan document It contemplates the “useful and sustainable management” of these catches: human consumption, recovery of scavenger fauna, transfer to areas with a rabbit deficit and regulated marketing. What’s more, for the farmer or hunter to get paid it is not enough to kill, he must communicate the actions 24 hours in advance to the administration, comply with the conditions of the emergency resolution and then justify expenses on fences, piles and others.
Foxes and eagles, off or out of coverage. Ecologists in Action denounced the Albacete Agriculture Delegation itself, which authorizes controls on predators such as the fox in the midst of a rabbit plague (and Spain needs them, just like the wolves). This, according to estimates, reinforces the ecological imbalance and leaves the farmer with fewer natural allies on the field.
The rabbit right now is halfway between resource and waste, subsidy object and marketable piece. Kill them and leave them for the scavengers? It could be dangerous from an environmental point of view. And even more so if they eat animals with myxomatosis. Kill them and eat them? It depends on the market: the price of the piece has fallen in recent months. This is also a symptom that the agrarian structure has a problem, if it generates surpluses of fauna in some points and extreme deficits in others, with lynxes and eagles without prey in thousands of Spanish mountains.
Who decides and with what laws. In Spain, responsibility for wildlife falls to the autonomous communities. Environment resolves when they consider that the damage is serious and widespread. In Castilla-La Mancha, the resolution of February 3, 2026 established the wild rabbit emergency in 364 municipalities.
The regional government also set up a “Permanent Table of the Mountain Rabbit“to sit down administrations, farmers, hunters and researchers to discuss measures and review the action plan. Nobody wants their vines, tomatoes or cereals to end up depleted, but at least we will have to talk beyond simple waste and debate subsidies from the agricultural lobby, better understand how hunting cycles have changed in this decade and listen to what animal rights and environmental organizations have to say.
Lateral solutions. PACMA and specialized jurists such as Lex Anima They demanded that the use of biocides be abandoned and hunting releases of rabbits be prohibited, providing data from trials on non-lethal measures with efficiencies that exceed 70 and up to 95%: perimeter fences, electric shepherds, acoustic deterrents and ecological products that make the crop less attractive.
Technical documents and standard European projects LIFE Iberconejo It started in 2025 proposing less compulsive strategies. The first: be more preventive and less reactive, restoring the role of natural predators and redesigning the agricultural landscape so that it is not an all-you-can-eat buffet where the rabbit population explodes.
Prevention includes fences of about 60 centimeters that block the animal but allow the passage of other animals, and the aforementioned foliar fertilizers with an unpleasant taste for the species, designed to spread around cereal crops. Because if everything comes down to taking the money and running, to half a million to intensify hunting, in 2027 we will be faced with an identical problem and having to raise the aid threshold to bring more shotguns to the field. A short-term solution, nothing more.
Images | Flickr (Beatriz Sanromán, Blai Biosca)
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