Every day, the correspondents’ club describes how the same news story is illustrated in other countries.
Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, affirms: the wolf is a “real danger for livestock and potentially for humans”. Its status as a protected species could be reassessed. In France, the new 2024-2029 wolf plan, presented on September 18, intends to facilitate shooting protocols. In Switzerland and Austria, measures of this type are already in place.
In Switzerland, there are plans to cull entire packs
The objective of the Swiss authorities: to proactively regulate the wolf population which has increased significantly in recent years. There are between 250 and 300 throughout Switzerland. Including a hundred more in just one year in a territory 13 times smaller than France. This is far too much according to those close to breeding.
For their part, wolf defense associations denounce nothing more and nothing less “a massacre” in preparation for. They also accepted at the beginning of the summer that the State would ease the conditions to be met in order to authorize a slaughter. But this is too much, they say. According to these associations, if the measure is applied, Switzerland would go from 31 packs to only 12. That is 60% of wolves killed in the territory.
In Austria, rapid slaughter authorizations
According to official Austrian estimates, around 80 specimens were recorded last year in this Alpine country of 9 million inhabitants. Two regions are particularly concerned: Carinthia, on the border with Slovenia, and Tyrol, a very touristy region in western Austria. Several regions have taken measures this year to deal with the presence of the canine by authorizing rapid culls.
The Austrian branch of the NGO WWF strongly opposed these measures. The association denounces a slaughter which is becoming systematic, according to it, in Austria. On the other hand, the announcement by the President of the European Commission was received with enthusiasm by the governor of Tyrol who promised to quickly send all the necessary data.