Wolves are strictly protected in Germany - Hubert Aiwanger wants to change that.
Bavaria's deputy head of government calls for a change in the hunting law at Merkur.de.
Munich – The wolf as an election campaign topic.
Half a year before the Bavarian state elections, Free Voters boss Hubert Aiwanger puts the animal on the agenda.
The trigger for the Bavarian Economics Minister: The tragedy of Trentino, where a bear killed a jogger.
This is "the result of ideal world ideologies from the big city, which see rural areas as a playground." Wolves and bears have no natural enemies.
"The conflicts, including human deaths, are logically increasing." The blame for this is "unreasonable politics".
Since Good Friday evening (April 7), Aiwanger has targeted the wolf, tweeting about the animal ten times and attending a rally in Lower Saxony.
At
Merkur.de
he is in favor of changing the hunting law.
Aiwanger's demand: "The wolf must be hunted."
The wolf population in Germany is increasing – there are more animals in Lower Saxony alone than in Sweden
The wolf was considered extinct in Europe for a long time before it returned to Germany in the late 1990s.
Conservationists see this as a success for biodiversity.
Critics like Aiwanger say the wolf population is getting out of control.
In fact, the number of animals in this country is increasing.
According to the Federal Documentation and Advice Center for Wolves, there are currently 161 confirmed packs, 43 pairs and 21 individual animals living in Germany (as of November 2022).
A pack consists of eight to twelve animals.
Aiwanger assumes that there are 2,000 free-roaming wolves in Germany, and in Lower Saxony alone there are 450, almost as many wolves as in the whole of Sweden.
The animals are also at home in the eastern German states, for example in the forests of Brandenburg.
According to the authorities, at least 26 wolves have settled in Bavaria.
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The development of wolf territories in Germany.
There are more animals every year.
© Federal Center for Grazing Animals and Wolves (BZWW)
We can't take a shit on our heads any longer.
We must defend ourselves.
Hubert Aiwanger at a rally in Lower Saxony on the subject of wolves.
Wolf always causes trouble: "We have to defend ourselves"
According to the authorities, there has not been an attack by a wolf on a human since the wild animal was resettled in Germany.
The animal is considered shy.
Nevertheless, the wolf always causes trouble.
Livestock farmers worry about wolf attacks.
Aiwanger now wants to give them a voice, too, when he says, as in Lower Saxony: “We can no longer let ourselves be shitted on.
We have to defend ourselves."
The wolf appears several times in the not yet public election program of the Free Voters, which is available to our editorial team.
There is talk of "effective management plans for large predators such as the wolf" or the "protection of wild and farm animals from the wolf by including them in the hunting law".
This is already the case in Lower Saxony.
As a rule, however, the wolf enjoys the highest possible protection under the Federal Nature Conservation Act - and may only be hunted under special circumstances, for example if an animal has been shown to have repeatedly killed livestock.
Otherwise, shooting a wolf is considered a criminal offence.
Aiwanger demands a change in the hunting law: "If the wolves increase, there are fewer game"
Aiwanger criticizes the current regulations at
Merkur.de
: "We currently have the area hunting system in Germany.
This means that the landowners lease their land to a hunting tenant who pays money for it.” In Aiwanger's account, the wolf is now ensuring that the hunting areas are fewer.
"When the wolves increase, there is less game and the hunters no longer pay money for the hunt."
Aiwanger's prognosis: "Then the state will take over responsibility and ideologically patronize the landowners.
The landowners will then - property obliges - have to pay fees for state wildlife managers. "There is a need to change the hunting law, also for reasons of tourism.
"If we are not allowed to actively hunt the wolf, tourism will be at massive risk in a few years because farmers will no longer be able to drive out grazing animals and the landscape will become overgrown and lose its attractiveness."
Traffic light against the hunt for wolves: Federal government relies on dialogue "grazing animal husbandry and wolves"
At the beginning of 2022, a wolf made headlines in Upper Bavaria, killing or injuring sheep, goats and wild animals near a settlement and then being released for shooting by the Upper Bavarian government.
His body was eventually found in the Czech Republic.
The wolf is one of the strictly protected animal species.
The federal government speaks out against hunting, a
Merkur.de
request to the responsible Ministry of Agriculture initially went unanswered.
The coalition agreement states: "Our goal is to organize the coexistence of grazing animals, humans and wolves so well that as few conflicts as possible occur despite the still increasing wolf population."
In any case, there seems to be a need for discussion.
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