Forestry, recreational hunting and wildlife in conflict

Nature works, this doesn't need to be scientifically proven, it worked even before our human existence, but now in our cultural landscape, so often cited by forestry and hunting, everything is "eaten bare".

Editorial Team Wild beim Wild — March 22, 2024

Deer devour the forest, wolves devour the game.

The forestry industry claims that deer are eating the forest, and the hunting lobby claims that wolves are eating the game.

Forest regeneration is the buzzword of modern forestry. As a recent issue of forsterklaert.de stated: "Forests don't only arise from human intervention, but also from entirely natural development. When trees shed their seeds and small trees grow from them, foresters refer to this as natural regeneration." It's actually quite alarming that we humans have become so disconnected from nature, and that nature's most natural process, reproduction, is being sold as new scientific discoveries.

How incredibly far removed, then, is the idea of the urgently needed rewilding, the renaturalization, the concept of simply giving nature the space and time to regenerate itself and on its own. This would allow healthy and resilient mixed forests with great biodiversity and the best conditions for animal biodiversity to develop – we simply have to allow this to happen.

The triangle of plants, herbivores and predators is nature, it has of course functioned for millions of years, but we now live in a "cultural landscape", as it is portrayed by the forestry and hunting lobbyists.

The forestry-hunting conflict

A cultural landscape is understood to be a landscape shaped by humans. According to certain religious communities, the cultural landscape has developed from the natural landscape over millennia. Within this natural landscape, humans must now manage wildlife and plants. The plant world is managed by the forestry lobby – "trees don't grow by themselves" – but so too, of course, is the world of wildlife , managed by recreational hunters. Ultimately, humans are considered superior to everyone else and therefore simply claim the right to do so, according to this widespread opinion.

The so-called forestry-hunting conflict has a very long tradition in Central Europe. At its core, it consists of the tension between landowners, recreational hunters, and authorities, all pursuing different interests, which naturally doesn't help nature. Forest or game? Of course, both, but the right balance has been fiercely contested for decades. Now, however, climate change and the unprecedented extinction of species are increasing the pressure to find a solution.

For over 30 years, the number of recreational hunters has been growing, and with it, the number of animals killed has increased exorbitantly. For decades, more and more recreational hunters have been shooting ever-increasing amounts of game, as the German Hunting Association's (DJV) own official hunting statistics have attested for decades. Although management has been completely ineffective for many decades, and forest damage reports consistently paint a devastating picture of man-made timber plantations, even though browsing damage isn't even mentioned, deer and stags are pointed the finger. "They're eating the forest clean," say the hunters, if one believes the forest owners and the relevant hunting magazines.

In the last five years of severe drought and the largest forest fires in terms of area and number, an incredible 2,397 forest fires were recorded across Germany in 2022, a significantly above-average year for forest fires compared to the multi-year average of the years 1993 to 2021 (1,029 forest fires).

Monocultures as a cause

Faced with the vast destruction of natural areas, a large proportion of forestry officials have now recognized that man-made monocultures are the reason for the completely ruined vast "forests", and are therefore also partly responsible for the unprecedented mass extinction of species and climate change.

Storms, extreme drought, and bark beetle infestation have severely damaged Germany's forests in recent years. Almost five percent of the total forest area disappears annually, according to a satellite-based analysis by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Within this context—shrinking forest areas coupled with ever-increasing wildlife populations (as evidenced by hunting statistics, which are also an indicator of wildlife populations)—we are moving further and further away from natural and balanced ecosystems.

The urgently needed "forest conversion" towards near-natural mixed forests has been desired and decided upon for some time now. But isn't that a clear admission of having completely failed with the man-made illusion of a world? Now, at least in this initial phase, Mother Nature is supposed to be allowed to actually take the reins, not humankind, even in our "cultural landscape"?

When the European beech successfully re-established itself in Central Europe after the last Ice Age, around 6,000 years ago, large parts of what would later become Germany had already been populated for millennia by red deer and roe deer, as well as other herbivores such as bison, wild horses, and elk. The fact that these large herbivores and true landscape gardeners are now seen by many foresters as competitors to forest development cannot, therefore, be attributed to our native herbivores.

Wolf as a scapegoat for the hunting lobby

Predators, in turn, are the competitors of hunters, and so it's not really surprising that wolves are now being blamed for the currently smaller hunting quotas in some regions, where previously the culling plans called for more herbivores to be eliminated for forest conversion. Every nature photographer has seen firsthand that where wolves live, ungulates are also at home. This is actually quite logical, because why would wolves settle in an area devoid of game? No, the wolf is to be allowed to be hunted, and there are two very good reasons for this.

Germany is the world's second-largest consumer of hunting trips, behind the USA. The desire for the wolf trophy is immense, and there are numerous providers and customers. In countries like Russia, Hungary, Sweden, Turkey, and Latvia, a wolf can be hunted for approximately €1,800 in travel expenses and another €1,400 in trophy fees, thus fulfilling the childhood hunting dreams of some hobby hunters, as evidenced by relevant online forums.

Controlling population dynamics via shooting plans and routes is also very difficult, if not impossible, due to the presence of the wolf.

Recently, one hears accusatory statements like this: "When the wolf is present in our area, hardly anything works anymore. During a driven hunt, we were standing in front of a wild boar piglet with 20 hunters after the drive, but five different wolves were sighted and photographed. Mouflon sheep are completely gone (eaten)."

The hunting magazine recently stated, in a lamenting or accusatory tone: "Wildlife populations have declined dramatically. According to the association, there was a large-scale hunt in the Uckermark region (Vietmannsdorf hunting area) where 50 amateur hunters returned empty-handed."

436,000 amateur hunters versus 1,400 wolves

Some blame forest conversion for this. Therefore, increased culling quotas have significantly increased the pressure on wildlife in some regions, leading to a dramatic reduction in populations in hunting areas, at least in those managed by the state forestry service. Other recreational hunters, who want to continue shooting game and don't want to give up their shooting pleasure, complain that wolves are devouring the game, similar to the argument of the forestry lobby, which claims that deer are devouring the forests. Deer are devouring the forest, wolves are devouring the game.

But why is a conservationist—as some hobby hunters like to call themselves—complaining about shrinking hunting areas? Why, for years, has the finger been pointed at the culling quotas set by the lower hunting authority and which hobby hunters are obligated to fulfill? Now, at a time when the wolf is doing the job, and in a much more natural and selective way, he complains that there's nothing left to shoot. And if there really were nothing left to shoot, then there would be no more "browsing damage," and the world would be as both sides supposedly intended. But this traditional conflict doesn't end that easily. The foresters want maximum yield, and the hobby hunters want to shoot wild animals tomorrow, too.

The interests of forestry and recreational hunting have always been at odds. Today, however, in the effort to finally correct past mistakes and transform the forest into mixed woodlands, the wolf is being accused of preying on wild animals. There are 1,400 wolves in Germany compared to 436,000 recreational hunters with gigantic and ever-increasing hunting quotas. Just one example: Back in the 1990s, 300,000 recreational hunters killed approximately 120,000 wild boar; last year, around 403,000 recreational hunters killed 830,000 wild boar, while wolves killed only about 3,500. The situation is similar with almost all of the other approximately 40 huntable wild animal species.

All the arguments boil down to the same thing: being allowed to shoot wolves, to mount them as trophies alongside many other wild animal species introduced by hunting clubs for sport, such as fallow deer, sika deer, or mouflon, and to let population dynamics work in their favor. If we don't resolve this long-standing forest-wildlife conflict very soon for the benefit of the urgently needed, vibrant natural world, our living conditions will continue to deteriorate drastically and ever more rapidly. We all have the opportunity to change this; we just mustn't leave it in the hands of those who only indulge their own private pleasure or commercial interests.

Source: Guido Meyer

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