Austria: Wildlife Feeding Stations as a Problem for Nature

In the wake of the widespread debate on enclosed hunting grounds, which led to nationwide bans, the hunting community apparently felt the need to polish its image. To this end, they seized upon the heavy snowfall in January in Austria and marketed their large-scale winter feeding operations as a superior form of animal welfare. Some animal welfare advocates fell for it. Yet the very issue of enclosed hunting grounds had already shown what kind of animal tragedies these feeding stations bring with them. Not only do the artificially inflated populations — caused by the feeding stations — completely destroy their own habitat, the forest, within the enclosures. Inevitably, the autumn then brings the great massacres of driven hunts. And that is the real purpose of these feeding stations, not animal welfare: to keep as many impressive trophy animals as possible available for shooting in the hunting territory.

The VGT (Verein Gegen Tierfabriken Österreich — Association Against Animal Factories Austria) therefore sought to bring more objectivity to the discussion and invited three recognised experts to a press conference on hunting-related feeding of trophy-bearing wildlife at the Café Landtmann:

The former long-serving hunter and official veterinarian, Prof. Dr. Rudolf Winkelmayer, spoke of hunting trips with his father during his childhood, at a time when feeding stations did not yet exist — and yet the roe deer and red deer survived the far snowier winters of those days. He warned against the domestication of wild animals through feeding stations and called for all hunting to cease from 21 December onwards. In other countries without a territorial hunting system, the hunting season would be considerably shorter. In Austria, by contrast, hunting takes place throughout the entire year.

Retired university lecturer in veterinary medicine Dr. Hans Frey recalled that in earlier times, alongside roe deer and red deer, there had also been elk, two massive species of wild cattle, and wild horses in our region, and yet a considerable diversity of tree species and other forms of vegetation had been possible. Today, however, flora and fauna are increasingly reduced to species that are economically and huntable. The red deer has attained cult status. He himself, in his younger years, had been pressured by the hunting community to conceal ecologically critical findings so that hunting for large trophy animals could continue undisturbed.

Finally, wildlife biologist Dr. Karoline Schmidt spoke and described supplemental feeding as poison. It would not only lead to the destruction of forests, but also to serious disadvantages for the very wild animals being fed. First, hunting pressure increases with population size, and naturally so does the number of animals shot; and second, it pushes deer and roe deer into unnatural behaviors, such as nocturnal activity, early flight from humans, and use of unsuitable habitats. Red deer and roe deer are well adapted to winter and can survive it without supplemental feeding, provided population sizes are managed appropriately and the animals are not stressed by hunting during winter.

VGT chairman DDr. Martin Balluch refuses to believe that hunters truly love animals:

"Why are only red deer and roe deer fed, but not, for example, wild boar or foxes? All animals have greater difficulty finding food in winter. Instead, foxes are shot year-round — completely pointlessly, as the example of the city of Vienna shows: there, fox hunting was completely stopped across 58,000 hectares, with positive effects on nature. The callous fox hunt, even in winter, makes it clear: feeding deer and roe deer serves nothing but trophy worship — certainly not animal welfare."

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