The Rada has registered a bill on hunting reform — animal rights activists demand it be rejected

A bill No. 15431 on hunting management, hunting, and the sustainable use of game animals has been registered in the Verkhovna Rada.

The initiative has sparked a wave of outrage from animal and environmental protection organizations, which are demanding the document be rejected at first reading. This was reported by RBC-Ukraine.

The bill was registered on July 20, 2026, sent to committee on July 22 — with the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management designated as the lead committee — and made available for review on July 23. The initiative was put forward by a group of more than 40 members of parliament, including Ihor Marchuk, David Arakhamia, Oleksandr Kornienko, and others.

In the explanatory note, the authors state that the current law “On Hunting Management and Hunting,” adopted in 2000, has over more than twenty years “practically exhausted its regulatory potential.” The purpose of the new document is to create a modern legal, economic, organizational, and environmental model for managing the sector.

Among the bill’s key innovations are the creation of a Unified Hunting Registry, the transfer of most procedures to electronic format, and the issuance of permits online. Mandatory marking of certain species of harvested animals with individual identification means is envisaged to ensure product traceability and combat poaching. Annual centralized harvest quotas are planned to be replaced by sustainable game management plans, which users will develop on the basis of scientific research. The authority to grant and revoke the use of hunting grounds is proposed to be transferred to local state administrations through a transparent competitive selection process. Penalties for violations of hunting rules are proposed to be strengthened, and additional legal and social guarantees are to be introduced for gamekeepers and hunting inspectors.

The explanatory note also states that implementation of the law will require funding — in particular, for the creation of the Unified Hunting Registry and the animal identification system. At the same time, an increase in budget revenues is expected.

The organization UAnimals stated that the registered bill “expands the boundaries of legalized violence.” Animal rights activists emphasized that “a business entity, including a public association with legal entity status” would be able to obtain hunting grounds for use. In response to the explanatory note’s assertion that “activities in the field of hunting management affect the interests of hundreds of thousands of citizens,” UAnimals stated: “private gain is justified by public good, while the issue is first and foremost about the lives of animals.”

“But hunting is not ‘active recreation’ — it is plain and simple killing for entertainment and profit,” the animal rights activists stated.

UAnimals called on members of parliament to reject bill No. 15431 and appealed to Ukrainians to spread information about the document and tag their MPs.

Detailed arguments against the bill, citing specific articles, were also published by the Kyiv Ecological and Cultural Center (KECC). Article 1 introduces the concept of “hunting tourism” — travel for hunting “in a natural environment and/or in semi-free conditions.” According to KECC’s assessment, this means that “Ukrainian enterprises will raise victims, a foreign client will come and shoot them for money, and the state will call it tourism.” The same Article 1 lists hunting implements — firearms, bows, crossbows, spears, traps, vehicles, drones, electrical equipment, optics, thermal imagers, night-vision devices, sound-reproducing devices — and ends with the words “etc.” Environmentalists point out that the current Article 20 prohibits sound-reproducing devices, whereas the new bill contains no such prohibition and the list of implements is open-ended.

Article 31 prohibits “hunting and/or trapping during the dark hours of the day,” but makes exceptions for hunting wild boar, wolf, fox, jackal, raccoon dog, and invasive alien species. A provision in Article 32 concerning dogs drew particular outrage:

“Purebred dogs found unattended in hunting grounds shall be caught, and district and regional organizations that register the relevant dog breeds shall be notified in writing. Mongrel dogs may be harvested as part of the regulation of wild animal populations.”

KECC specialists also noted that the bill uses the concept of “harmful animals,” which, in their words, “science abandoned back in the last century.” In addition, environmental activists drew attention to Article 17 on fees for the use of hunting grounds: by their calculations, the rate amounts to approximately 6.66 hryvnias per hectare of Ukrainian forest per year. The grounds are proposed to be allocated for 20 years with automatic renewal (Article 12), and in the absence of a response from an official within the deadline, “tacit consent” applies (Articles 11, 12). The minimum area of a forest hunting ground is meanwhile being reduced from three thousand hectares to five hundred.

The creation of a new Agency — a central executive body in the field of hunting management — drew separate criticism. According to KECC’s assessment, under Article 9, this body simultaneously promotes hunting and exercises oversight over itself.

Environmental activists also noted that a number of actions previously classified as poaching have been moved in the new bill to the category of “violations of hunting rules.” These include, in particular, hunting with the use of fire. At the same time, Article 31 explicitly states: “Violation of the prohibitions set out in this article of the Law shall be considered a violation of hunting rules and shall not constitute poaching.”

In conclusion, KECC stated that the document “cannot be corrected through amendments” and “cannot be revised before a second reading,” since it “is built on the conviction that a wild animal is a commodity, its death is a service, and the Ukrainian forest is a venue for paid entertainment.” The organization demands that bill No. 15431 be rejected at first reading.