The video from the Mavrovo National Park was published eight months ago. For eight months it sat online with nobody reacting, until an environmental organisation brought it out at a press conference. Only then did the subject become public.

According to the organisations that raised it, the footage shows commercial chamois hunting in a protected zone - and a ritual in which foreign guests drink the blood of the animals they have shot. The organisation Anima Mundi reacted sharply: "There is nothing normal about killing wild animals for entertainment, a trophy or commercial interest. There is no justification for reducing the life of a free creature to a target or a shot of adrenaline."

But the most important sentence in their statement is not that one. "The question is not only what we see in the video, but who allowed this, who enabled it, who was supervising it?"

Three questions, not one answer

That is the point where the story stops being about foreign hunters and becomes a story about state institutions. The park administration says this was a sanitary cull within the regular wildlife management programme. That explanation may well be formally accurate - but it does not cover the other half of what is visible: commercial agencies offering tours like this inside a protected zone.

In parallel, social media is full of photographs of foreign hunters from Balkan countries with trophy stags shot in Macedonian forests. One of them called his kill "the first king of the forest" and a memory for life.

Neither the Ministry of Agriculture nor the State Inspectorate for Forestry and Hunting has published a single one of the following: how many foreign nationals received hunting permits this year, which hunting grounds have been given to concessionaires, and whether field checks are carried out to establish whether the animals shot were a permitted cull or a protected species.

Those are three numbers sitting in somebody's drawer. Not one of them is a state secret. Until they are published, every explanation that this was a "regular programme" remains unverifiable - and a hunting concession inside a national park is precisely the thing the public has a right to know who signed and on what terms.

Anima Mundi is calling for an immediate moratorium on all activities that threaten the area's natural values, a full investigation and transparency. The organisation Eko-svest goes a step further and wants Mavrovo National Park re-proclaimed. Whether they get an answer or silence will show who actually governs that space.