At the end of May 2025, a photo showing hundreds of bodies of dead deer and other animals went viral on the Internet. It is alleged that they were killed while clearing an area intended for the construction of a green energy park in Portugal. We have checked whether this information is correct.

A terrible photo of dead animals with such a description of the cause of their death can be found in “VKontakte", X, Facebook, Telegram and other social networks. Users blogging platforms, who also shared the photo, are outraged by the duplicity of the authorities, animal rights activists and activists who allegedly ignored the killing of animals for the sake of a climate protection project. Some publications contain not only photos of dead animals, but also a news headline in a certain media outlet.

“Verified” was unable to find any recent news reports in reputable Portuguese and international media about the shocking mass killing of animals at the site of the future solar energy park. However, the screenshot posted by Internet users is genuine. If you search by news title, you can find article Portugal Resident publications. However, the viral screenshot did not include the date of publication – December 22, 2020.

The article talks about an incident that occurred a week before - pictures published by a group of Spanish hunters with comments about a “super record hunt” appeared on social networks. The animals were killed within the hunting grounds in the municipality of Azambuja near Lisbon. The media wrote that the hunt for 16 tourists from Spain was organized by a Spanish company that conducts similar events on the Iberian Peninsula. Some publications (for example, the same Portugal Resident) indicate that the animals were presumably exterminated to clear the territory before the construction of a green energy park. However, most local publications claimed that it was simply a matter of hunting for the entertainment of tourists.

The date of publication is not the only thing that Internet users are silent about, spreading a five-year-old article under the guise of fresh news. At the end of 2020, the incident caused a great public outcry, about it wrote and local media, and foreign, including Russian. The authorities and the Portuguese public, as well as animal activists around the world, were outraged by the mass extermination of animals for fun. Portuguese Party for Animal Rights condemned hunters and called on the Environment Minister to bring them to justice. Portuguese Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF) immediately started investigation of what happened. Although hunting was legal in this area, this brutal mass extermination of animals confined within a fenced area with no means of escape prompted the ICNF to revoke the hunting license in the area. The owners of the land, however, insisted: they did not allow tourists to shoot several hundred animals at once and as a result suffered more than other interested parties. In addition, ICNF filed a complaint with the prosecutor's office. Minister of Environment and Climate Joao Pedro Matos Fernandes promised call on the National Hunting Council to review the policy in this area in Portugal.

A year later, local publication Publico released material on how the investigation is progressing. It turned out that authorities were never able to identify the suspects. The same material also talks about the fate of solar panels, which, indeed, were planned to be installed in Azambuzha. According to Publico, the companies involved in this project denied any connection between the incident and their activities. As journalists note, the process of installing solar panels has only slowed down - as a result, construction launched only at the end of 2022 and planned to be completed in two years. However, at the time of writing this analysis there was no information about the commissioning of the facility.

Thus, the incident referred to in viral publications actually occurred in Portugal, but at the end of 2020. Although the information is presented as if hundreds of animals were killed in preparation of the site for the construction of a solar energy park, Verified did not find evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Some Portuguese journalists, in notes five years ago, mentioned the upcoming construction of the park, but clarified that the connection between these two events is only speculative and has not been confirmed. According to reports, the animals were killed in a hunt organized by a Spanish company specializing in such events, and the participants paid money for it. The statement that animal rights activists and environmental activists ignored the incident is also untrue; in 2020 it caused a great stir.

Cover photo: Portugal Resident