Brandenburg approves animal welfare-violating bow hunting

Although bow hunting of animals has been banned in Germany since 1976, the Brandenburg Ministry of the Environment is planning to issue a corresponding exemption permit.

This would allow bow hunting of wildlife in Stahnsdorf and Kleinmachnow until at least January 2020. PETA fears that the pilot project is intended to set a precedent for legalising archaic bow hunting in Germany once again. An analysis of around two dozen studies from the USA, where bow hunting is widely permitted, shows that this hunting method frequently causes considerable animal suffering. According to the findings, 54% of animals are not killed immediately. Wounded animals often manage to flee, which can lead to a days-long death struggle. The animal welfare organisation is calling on the Ministry of the Environment to withdraw the bow hunting permit, and emphasises that bow hunting would in all likelihood lead to violations of § 17 paragraph 2b of the Animal Welfare Act, which prohibits inflicting significant, prolonged pain on any animal.

Allowing bow hunting would be a regression to the Middle Ages. Hunting animals with bow and arrow may give some recreational hunters a special ‘kick’. However, since this hunting method is extraordinarily cruel, it has no place in an enlightened society.

Nadja Michler, Wildlife Policy Officer at PETA

In a further study, scientists from the University of Oklahoma documented that in a bow hunt involving 22 white-tailed deer, 50 percent of the animals were merely wounded and (initially) could not be found. Even taking into account that wild boar display different flight distances and behaviour than roe deer, the circumstances point to an intolerably high wounding rate. The Swiss Animal Protection association (STS) concludes in its strictly opposing position: „Shooting with arrows allows for not the slightest inaccuracy in aim and frequently results in pass-through shots with no guaranteed killing effect.“

Dug-up gardens are, in PETA's view, no sufficient reason to justify killings, especially since milder means such as deterrent methods are also available. Hunting is fundamentally unsuitable for permanently regulating wildlife populations. On the contrary, hunters intervene massively in nature and undermine the effect of natural regulatory mechanisms such as food availability, climate, and disease. With regard to wild boar in particular, scientific findings indicate that the destruction of social structures through hunting ultimately leads to an increase in wild boar populations. One study shows that female wild boar in hunted populations reach sexual maturity earlier and that birth rates increase. PETA appeals to Brandenburg's Environment Minister Jörg Vogelsänger to acknowledge the scientific facts at hand, rather than once again putting a hunting method — long since described by science as animal cruelty — back under scrutiny.

PETA's motto is: Animals are not ours to experiment on, eat, wear, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way.