Hunting is again authorized from this Tuesday, September 15 in Algeria. It had been suspended because of the civil war in the 1990s. And if it had been tolerated for a few years, it was still not legalized.
This first hunting period, officially approved by the Algerian government, will be in force until January 1, 2021.
In the dark decade of the 1990s, raids by Islamist groups stole the guns of the villagers in order to arm their maquis. In reaction, the authorities confiscated the rifles of some 60,000 hunters and the million gun owners present in the territory and thus suspended all hunting activity in the country.
This suspension caused the boar to proliferate. This is what prompted the government to open, once again, a hunting season. Previously, nearly 50,000 boars were killed each year. Their number has therefore continued to increase, as has the damage caused by the animal to the destructive snout.
The other objective of this authorization is to no longer force hunters to buy their ammunition on the black market. Until then, hunting was tolerated but not the trade of equipment. According to the General Forestry Department, 5,000 permits have so far been granted to hunters who have been trained by the authorities and the latter have announced that they wish to increase this number to 12,000 in the coming days.