Environmental policy lacks substance, NGO urges ban on duck hunting

The environmental NGO Coendu has issued a strong call for the Uruguayan government to definitively ban duck hunting, demanding the "immediate signature" of a decree to halt the practice.

Coendu asserts that the current administration has not followed through on its promise to review hunting decrees from the previous government. Instead, they claim, the reality has been a failure to act, leading to the automatic renewal of permits that allow legal duck hunting. This renewal, they warn, will permit the "legal slaughter of ducks in our territory."

The NGO argues that this practice systematically violates Article 5 of Law No. 9.481, which empowers the executive branch to regulate hunting species. Coendu insists there is no scientific basis to justify the extraction of these species. They point to a state-funded study from years ago that recommended maintaining the hunting ban for at least five more years, a recommendation they say the government is now ignoring in favor of "private interests."

"The government does not uphold its own word," Coendu stated, recalling that upon taking office, the administration pledged to review and repeal hunting decrees from the Luis Lacalle Pou mandate. They quote the Minister of Environment, Edgardo Ortuño, who reportedly told Coendu that he "did not have time" to stop the hunting of this species last year after its automatic renewal. Coendu dismisses "lack of management and political inaction" as an excuse for the "uninterrupted slaughter of wildlife."

In the context of a global and national biodiversity crisis, Coendu views allowing the sport hunting of native species as an "act of contempt towards our natural heritage." They emphasize the critical roles of wetlands and the birds within them, stating that continuing to permit hunting through automatic decrees demonstrates an "environmental policy empty of substance and misaligned with nature protection." The NGO concludes that allowing hunting for recreation or "trophy tourism" without ethical or biological justification positions authorities on the side of "death and recreational extractivism."