MURDER OF SPANISH WILDLIFE RANGERS CALLS FOR ARMED SERVICE

Paco Morales brings his patrol car to a halt on a windy and almost deserted stretch of road smack in the heart of Spain. In the hot spring sky overhead, eagles, vultures and kites wheel, idly scanning the land’s mid-morning menu.

“This guy looks a bit pissed off,” says the veteran forest ranger, nodding towards the figure on the verge.

More than three decades as a ranger – or environmental agent as they are now known – have taught the 54-year-old how to read people quickly and from a distance. Fortunately, the angry man on the verge wanted nothing more than to complain about his neighbour stealing stones.

During his time patrolling the huge, mainly rural and sparsely populated region of Castilla-La Mancha, Morales has often found himself threatened by those who take exception to his duties.

Illegal hunters have warned him to bring a gun the next time their paths cross, and there was an incident in which he was nearly run off the road by a man who followed him out of a restaurant where he was having lunch.

Not all of Spain’s 6,000 rangers have been so lucky. Three months ago, two in Catalonia asked a hunter to show them his firearms licence. He responded by shooting both men dead at close range.

The murders have served as a stark reminder of the dangers rangers face and spurred calls for the service to be armed.

“We knew it was something that could happen one day, but we were surprised by the way in which it happened and the violence of it all,” said Morales. “You know that if it’s happened to someone else, it could happen to you.”

Perhaps the biggest problem, he says, is the lack of understanding of the job he does. Half-police officer, half ecological steward, Spain’s environmental agents are responsible for everything from monitoring hunting and fishing to tackling pollution, protecting endangered species and combatting forest fires. Last year a ranger died fighting a fire in the Canary Islands.

To do the job, says Morales, an agent must be a cop, watchman, teacher, negotiator, diplomat, psychologist and firefighter – “an all-round juggler”.



He accepts the risks inherent in his line of work, but Morales and many of his fellow agents want to feel better protected. “It doesn’t make any sense to have us trying to do our jobs and asking thousands of armed people in the country to show us the necessary documentation if it’s not a level playing field.

“If it’s a risky situation and one I can’t avoid, I feel safer knowing that I have the possibility of defending myself. In the best case, you can go 95% of the way to guaranteeing your safety. But if you have don’t have good communications, a weapon, a bulletproof jacket, rapid back-up or a knowledge of verbal judo, that figure drops to 50%. It’s that simple.”

Rubén Cabrero, the president of the Spanish Association of Forest and Environmental Agents, said the murders in Catalonia marked “a before and an after”.

Agents have been murdered in past, some by Eta and infamously by a still unidentified killer with a chainsaw in 1991, but the association believes violence and aggression is rising.

“Over the past two years, the number of assaults has increased exponentially,” Cabrero said. “It can be threats painted on the walls of people’s homes, car tyres being slashed or physical assaults. One colleague was nearly knifed last year.

“That’s why we’ve been warning for a while, that what has happened could happen, but no one’s paid us any attention.”

Some agents in areas such as La Rioja and Catalonia are armed with carbines or pistols, but the majority lost their weapons after the state forestry guard, formed in 1877, came under the control of Spain’s autonomous regions following the country’s return to democracy.

In February, the association met the Spanish interior minister to ask for agents to be allowed to carry handguns, and for the service to be recognised at the national level.

“We may be tasked with protecting the environment, but we’re policemen just like the police in the cities,” says Cabrero. “We have the same problems that a police officer could have in the centre of Madrid.

“In fact, we’re the group that deals with the largest number of armed people. Most people in the city aren’t armed, but in the countryside a lot of people have guns.”

When Morales began his career more than 30 years ago, he had little more than “a carbine and a motorbike to protect the common good”. Today, he has a 4x4, a uniform, a mobile phone and a radio. Even so, it remains a solitary vocation.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is his motivation. “You may not have the power to solve all the world’s problems, but you do have the ability to protect and to conserve.

“Maybe there’s a pair of of Spanish imperial eagles that have managed to have chicks this year because you’ve thought about them. Maybe you’ve told a farmer to leave the nest alone. Because of that, maybe there are two or three more of those eagles flying overhead and pushing up the population. It’s doing something to help something you love.”