Last year, following a proposal from a group of Saeima deputies, the Hunting Law was reopened. The reason – the wish of certain proponents of the idea to hunt red deer even where a hunting district contains only agricultural land rather than forests, bogs and scrubland, as the current regulatory framework requires. How do the heads of hunters' organisations view the situation?

Latvijas Mednieku asociācija chairman of the board Haralds Barviks:

"At the moment it is very hard to comment any further, because so far all we can see is a direction sketched out by a narrow interest group. Certain people want to push it through in favour of farmers. Since the law is open, we hunters must follow every development and submit our own proposals for the second reading, and object in good time to ideas that are unacceptable for the development of game management.

What is being pushed at the moment is the wish to hunt red deer in every allotment garden. That means there will simply be no point in talking about any kind of organised game management any more. By promoting ideas like these, we could destroy the foundation of everything we have built over the past 30 years. And all of it because of the ideas of a very narrow interest group.

Those who might be interested in a project to hunt small patches manage less than 1% of the total hunting area in Latvia… And it will have no effect whatsoever on the scale of the damage.

By contrast, if we start hunting red deer in every allotment garden, we destroy the foundations of game management. It will no longer even be possible to talk about red deer selection as such.

At the moment the emphasis is on deer, because African swine fever has wiped out the boar, and now people want to declare the deer the ruin and wrecker of Latvia's economy. But this will certainly be extended to the elk as well…"

https://www.medibam.lv/viedokli-reala-iespeja-sagraut-30-gadu-veidoto-medibu-saimniecibu-latvija