House committee asks to see government mouflon plan

The House agriculture committee has asked the government to submit a scheme that tackles all the problems mouflons cause to the produce and property of farmers by the end of September, it was announced on Tuesday.

Head of the committee Andros Kafkalias said it’s been a year and a half since state officials said that a scheme was in the make, but that MPs heard nothing since.

The government, Kafkalias said, has done nothing to address the problem. “It is merely confined to declaring that it recognises the problem and that it will present a plan,” he said.

The plan concerns fencing of affected areas through a programme of agricultural development and that the agriculture, interior and finance ministries are in consultations to agree on a final plan.

He said that farmers wishing to fence their property are faced with red tape and complex procedures.
Soteris Antoniou, community leader of Kambos, one of the areas affected by mouflons, said in the past they were promised to be given the materials to fence off their property themselves.

He said that the population of mouflons has increased and the animals enter inhabited areas.

“We call on those in charge to solve our problem so that we won’t have to take the law into our hands,” Antoniou said.

“Mouflons are a protected species, but who is protecting us from the mouflons?” community leader of Tsakkistra Christodoulos Orfanides asked.

Orfanides said that the mouflon’s bite is such that it destroys young trees.

Residents of the Kambos and Tsakkistra villages, near Kykkos monastery, threatened to sue the government last year unless it took effective measures to stop mouflons destroying agricultural produce in the mountain areas where they live.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.