Criminal Complaint Filed Over Shooting of a Female Wolf
A female wolf is killed in Lower Saxony with official authorization. Animal welfare organizations file a criminal complaint. The case is controversial.
In the night of 11 February, a wolf was killed with state authorization in the Lower Saxony region of Osnabrück-Emsland.
Wrong Animal Shot
The animal that was shot was a female wolf. However, the special permit referred to a male animal. PETA has filed a criminal complaint with the Oldenburg public prosecutor's office against those responsible.
Wolves are meant to die according to the will of the Lower Saxony state government, so that shepherds suffer no financial losses. The shooter's hunting licence should be revoked immediately, as he is apparently unable to tell a female from a male wolf.
Dr. Edmund Haferbeck, Head of the Legal and Science Department at PETA
Recreational Hunters View Wolves as “Competitors”
The recreational hunters claim that native wildlife lacks natural enemies such as the wolf, while killing those very animals themselves. Predators are widely regarded as competition by recreational hunters and are persecuted accordingly.
128 Wolf Packs in Germany
After recreational hunters had driven wolves to extinction in the first place, it took over 100 years before they resettled in Germany. Today, 128 wolf packs live in the country. Norwegian researchers found that healthy wolves are generally no danger to humans.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
