Hunting
The President of Honor of World Wildlife Fund in Spain used to be King Juan Carlos I, who has been a known hunting enthusiast since 1962. In that year, when he was 24 years old, he was invited by the German Baron Werner von Alvensleben to a hunt in Mozambique. Since then, the king has taken part in hunting forays in Africa and Eastern Europe. In October 2004, he was a member of a hunt in Romania that killed a wolf and nine brown bears, including one that was pregnant, according to the Romanian newspaper Romania Libera. He was also accused by a Russian official of killing a bear called Mitrofan, supposedly after giving vodka to the animal, in an episode that sparked controversy in Spain, although the claim was never proven. In the same year, according to The Guardian, the Polish government allowed him to kill a European bison in Biaowiea Forest, even though it is an endangered species. Further controversy arose in April 2012 when the king's participation in an elephant hunt in Botswana was discovered only after he returned to Spain on an emergency flight after tripping over a step and fracturing his hip. Many Spanish environmental groups and leftist parties criticized the monarch's hobby and the World Wildlife Fund stripped him of the honorary position in July 2012, in an extraordinary assembly by 94% of the votes of the members.