Hunting could become easier
EU states vote to reduce wolf protection
25.09.2024, 15:16
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The growing wolf population is a problem especially for livestock farmers. The EU states are now voting for a weaker protection status for wolves. This would make it easier to shoot them. However, the decision is only the first step towards changing the law.
Representatives of the EU states, with Germany’s support, have initiated a weakening of the protection of wolves. This was confirmed by several diplomats in Brussels. The German government is thus changing its previous course in wolf policy. The decision does not yet enshrine a weaker protection status in EU law. The plan is to lower the protection status of the wolf from strictly protected to protected. This would most likely make it easier to shoot wolves, although details have not yet been finalized.
A lengthy process now follows, and today’s decision by representatives of the EU states is a first step towards lowering the protection status. Once the decision has been formally adopted at ministerial level, the EU can submit a corresponding application to the so-called Standing Committee of the Bern Convention to downgrade the protection status of the wolf.
This is an international treaty adopted by the Council of Europe in 1979 to protect European wild fauna and flora. If there is a majority in the Standing Committee for the changed protection status, the EU Commission can submit a proposal to change the protection status of the wolf in EU law.
Discussion in Germany now highly emotional
This proposal again needs a majority among the EU states and a majority in the European Parliament. Changes to the plan are possible. According to information from diplomatic circles, it is important to Germany that only the protection status for the wolf and not for other animals is changed. The EU Commission has promised this. In addition, from a German perspective, coexistence between wolves and pasture farming must be possible. “It is about ending deadly attacks and the painful death of our livestock and at the same time giving pasture farming a future,” said the deputy FDP parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Carina Konrad.
Nature conservation needs clear rules and the possibility of hunting wolves. With this change of course, the federal government is also reacting to a discussion that is becoming increasingly aggressive. Attacks on livestock such as sheep and cattle have recently become more frequent and are becoming a problem for grazing livestock farming – the self-declared goal of sustainable agriculture. Herd protection measures to ward off wolves are increasingly being overcome, it was recently said. While there are reports of wolves making it into stables, so-called removal – in practice the killing of individual animals – is a problem.
Wolf was extinct
Wolf conservationists are taking legal action in administrative courts and preventing the animals from being shot. Livestock farmers in large states such as Brandenburg and Lower Saxony are angry. They are demanding population management and even “wolf-free zones”. According to the WWF species conservation organization, the wolf survived in the east and south of Europe, but was eradicated in western Europe, including Germany, in the middle of the 19th century. The Saxon Wolf Specialist Office writes that in the 1970s and 1980s there was a rethink and the wolf was placed under protection in many European countries.
According to the Federal Environment Ministry, almost 1,400 wolves were detected in Germany in the 2022/2023 monitoring year. The European Environmental Bureau – an umbrella organization of environmental organizations – estimates that there are around 20,000 animals in Europe. The German Farmers’ Association, meanwhile, warns of increasing attacks on livestock by wolves. For 2022, the lobby organization reports more than 4,300 livestock killed, injured or missing. In 2018, this number was reportedly about half as high. According to official figures, compensation payments for corresponding damage have also increased significantly in these years.