Wise management also helps the wolf. Because it depends on people’s acceptance if it wants to survive.
There are currently 20 wolf packs in Switzerland with a total of around 150 wolves.
A new era is dawning in Switzerland when it comes to dealing with wolves. Both chambers of parliament have spoken out in favor of proactively regulating the protected animal. So it should no longer just be those wolves that have acquired the label “damaging” through a particularly large number of tears from sheep or goats. In the future, the cantons should be able to set shooting quotas in coordination with the Federal Office for the Environment, similar to the ibex. However, the wolf remains protected, so the shooting must not endanger the wolf population.
The Return of the Wolf is a success story. There are now more than 20 packs and over 200 animals living in Switzerland, which are continuing to multiply. It’s time to find a pragmatic approach to dealing with the predator. In the Alps there must be room for both: for the wolf, but also for alpine farming.
The wolf doesn’t stick to the script
There was a time when one could hope that the wolf would stick to the conservationists’ script. They like to portray him as a “protector of the forest” who regulates the deer and thus keeps the forest healthy. That’s not wrong, but many of the clever predators have long since noticed that the farm animals of the people in the Alps are easier prey than nimble deer or roe deer. Many also overcome farmers’ herd protection measures in their hunt for sheep and goats. The ideal image of the wolf as the guardian of a natural balance may apply to the Siberian tundra. In Switzerland the conditions are different.
The summer of 2022 in particular has shown that a wolf pack can pose existential questions to alpine farming. Meanwhile, the predators not only attack sheep and goats, but also cows. A wolf is soon spotted in a children’s playground, then growls at a hiker or shepherdess. No wonder patience is dwindling in the mountain areas: “Why aren’t we being protected from terror?” they ask themselves there. In Graubünden, stickers are distributed for cars aimed at tourists: “Welcome to Graubünden, take a wolf with you when you go home.” With this, the people of Graubünden allude to the wolf ditch. It divides Switzerland into areas where wolves are loved and areas where they live. There is hardly any overlap.
Problems cannot be downplayed
Two years ago, a similar relaxation of wolf protections at the ballot box failed, albeit narrowly. A referendum is also expected this time. However, Parliament has responded to one point of criticism. Competence for stock regulation remains with the federal government. In addition, nature conservation organizations are also registering the exponential growth in the wolf population. They are no longer fundamentally closed to regulation, they would simply like to have higher hurdles. At the same time, the growing problems of the mountain population are slowly penetrating the consciousness of the people living in the Central Plateau.
Therefore, the time has come for a more relaxed approach to the wolf. Of course, he remains a protected animal, even if some shepherds would probably like to ban him from Switzerland again. Clever management is the condition for living with him in a cultural landscape that also has other requirements to meet. The regulation passed by Parliament will not solve all problems. But a well dosed hunt ultimately also helps the wolf, which depends on human acceptance for its survival.