Graubünden: Sheep farmers and diffuse authorities in the wolf conflict
By now, 2 of the 4 innocent young wolves have already been shot, and with the 5 surviving young wolves it cannot be ruled out that they may have adopted a bad habit regardless — or perhaps not! What is such a hunter’s-yarn exercise worth in the open-air animal testing laboratory at the Beverin?
Shots were brutally fired into the Beverin pack in the canton of Graubünden, and 2 of 4 young wolves were eliminated because this summer at least 15 kills occurred from goat herds that were supposedly protected by properly installed electric fences.
This caused a threshold to be exceeded. DNA samples identified the male parent M92 as the perpetrator. However, this animal is being spared.
Last year, the animal M92 is said to have already attracted negative attention when it killed a large number of sheep on the Stutzalp above Splügen. For those animals, however, there had been no herd protection — they were therefore unprotected. In total, the wolf pair killed 59 sheep last year, and this year, following the formation of the pack, a further approximately 40 sheep kills occurred, said Graubünden’s hunting administrator Adrian Arquint. The pack consists of a total of nine young animals, half of which may be regulated according to the legislature, said Arquint. In plain terms, this also means that the pack killed fewer livestock this year in total than before the pack was formed!
The canton of Graubünden justifies its regulation request with major agricultural damage caused by the wolves of this pack during the summer of 2019.
The pack at the Central Graubünden Piz Beverin comprises the parents and, following the four completed shootings, five young animals.
The IG Wild beim Wild presents the actors in this sorry affair.
The young wolf killers
Adrian Arquint
When wolves begin to break through herd protection measures and reach the legally prescribed damage threshold, regulatory intervention is absolutely necessary (implementation of the legal framework: for wolf packs, only the option of regulation while sparing the parent animals). However, this is not only about regulating the wolves, but also about ensuring that the remaining wolves do not lose their wariness of humans.
Adrian Arquint, Head of the Office for Hunting and Fishing in Graubünden
This sounds very dramatic, typical hunters' talk: “When wolves begin…” However, the ordinary person, not shaped by recreational hunting, asks themselves: How is the pack supposed to learn in autumn 2019, through the shooting of its family members, what the parent animal M92 provoked three months earlier in summer 2019? What pedagogical or wildlife biology experience are these decision-makers drawing on? How are the wolves supposed to correctly connect the shooting of their family members to anything, when snipers in Graubünden terrorise them in a different location months later? That's not how science works! The alpine descent of the sheep and goats had largely already taken place weeks before. And why should the pack be trained to be wary of humans through this, even though they have done nothing to humans, yet it is apparently still easy to penetrate electrified wire fences?
Wolves are inherently wary of humans. Logically, it is the herd protection measures that should actually be put to the test — not young wolves being slaughtered in a populist manner.
Livestock guardian dogs are needed wherever farm animals are kept in the middle of wolf territory!
It has long been established in the literature among experts worldwide that culling can have no “educational” effect on wolves whatsoever. Those who make such decisions should first study how a wolf (or a dog) connects events and experiences. And would the young wolves not have dispersed soon anyway?
«It is alarming how little heed politics pays to practical experience and studies, instead allowing itself to be guided by pressure from vested interests.»
Gabor von Bethlenfalvy, large predator expert at WWF Switzerland.
Mario Cavigelli
The headquarters of violence at Stadtgartenweg 11 in Chur did not communicate where exactly the young animals were shot. The Beverin pack in Graubünden has its territory mainly in a hunting reserve, where any regulations are not permitted.
Mario Cavigelli is a politician who has already shamelessly put himself in the spotlight before the highest bodies in the past.
Flashback:
There is no doubt that State Councillor Mario Cavigelli (CVP) has lied to everyone in politics time and again, for example in the matter surrounding the special hunting initiative, to which a criminal complaint filed on 18.12.2017 by IG Wild beim Wild referred.
Apparently, the Office for Hunting and Fisheries of Graubünden, which submitted the culling application to FOEN, is indifferent to its animal welfare responsibilities when dealing with protected species. In the EU, this decision would hardly have passed.
Is the entire law and legal framework — which is also co-shaped by hobby hunters associated with the militant organisation Jagd Schweiz — merely a backdoor to covertly kill protected wolves? Why shoot the animal causing damage when you can gun down half a pack of innocent wolves?
In this way, the wolf is stigmatised as Public Enemy No. 1 and treated as the nation's stepchild, because it stands in the way of 2 unteachable minorities. The animal exploiters shy away from the extra effort required for herd protection and prefer to whine. The militant loden-wearers fear fewer wild animals to shoot and lust after predators. The fact is, however, that far more sheep and goats still go missing or die miserably because they are left entirely unsupervised in the mountains to eke out their existence, or are handed over to the butcher. These are truly, en masse, not pretty scenes that play out hidden away in the slaughterhouses.
The same State Councillor notoriously complains in the media that hobby hunters are not decimating red deer sufficiently and that their populations are increasing year after year. And then he has his best workers cold-bloodedly liquidated in a haze of hunting jargon. He supports bestial forms of hunting such as the special hunt, where much of what is forbidden during the regular open season is suddenly supposed to be sportsmanlike.
State Councillor Mario Cavigelli is not without fault either, but is obviously a friend of the death penalty.
Marc Chardonnens
«The FOEN explicitly welcomes the intention of the Canton of Graubünden to also achieve, through these cullings, a behavioral change in the remaining wolves of the pack, toward greater shyness toward humans.»
Marc Chardonnens, Director FOEN
In the information sheet «Wolf protection fences on small livestock pastures» by AGRIDEA, it states on page 1 «To date, there is no evidence in Switzerland of wolves jumping over electric fences.»
Did the wolves dig a tunnel, or how did they get through the allegedly perfectly functioning electrified wire fences? A net is said to have been partially torn, writes Marc Chardonnens in the approval of the FOEN for the population regulation of the wolf pack at Beverin GR 2019.
How is this possible when electrified wire fences carry 3’000 and 4’900 volts? At the first electric shock, any wolf would have fled — or are wolves now equipped with insulated stepladders?
A 90 cm high fence can practically be jumped by a poodle if it wants to try something new. If the fences collapse during an "attack," they are simply shoddy fences. Why can sheep repeatedly trample down fences? Because they were poorly installed or maintained. Moreover, it is easy for dubious sheep farmers to claim the fences were electrified. Any child can switch off the power source.
2 years ago, a wolf in Trun, also in the Canton of Graubünden, is said to have even jumped over a half-open stable door (113 cm).
Why is symptom management being pursued instead of further developing herd protection and bringing it to a functional level? It is obvious that in these current cases in the Canton of Graubünden, something is wrong with the herd protection and wire fences respectively.
Sheep farmers
Why can any Tom, Dick, and Harry park sheep and goats and spread out in what is actually wildlife territory? Over 200’000 sheep are carted into the mountains every year for a few months, costing taxpayers dozens of millions of francs in subsidies. Are roe deer, red deer, and chamois now grazing and foraging even less effectively than sheep?
These are impressive figures about the biomass of all vertebrates on land. The biomass of all livestock (such as cattle, horses, pigs, chickens, etc.) is calculated at 65%. Add to that humanity at 32%. In contrast, the biomass of all wild animals stands at just 3%. This means that humans and their livestock — most of which are raised under conditions of animal cruelty — account for 97% compared to just 3% for all wild animals living on the continents. An imbalance without equal, and one that should give us pause.
Following the shocking UN report on species extinction in spring 2019, attention turns to Switzerland. No country in the world has a higher proportion of threatened species than Switzerland. Over a third of plant, animal, and fungal species are considered at risk. It is always the same right-wing circles of hobby hunters and farmers' representatives, with their shabby lobbying, who bear political and legislative responsibility for this.
Particularly when it comes to animal exploiters and hobby hunters, it is absolutely essential to look very closely. Nowhere is there more manipulation through falsehoods, hunters' tall tales, and fake news. Violence and lies are two sides of the same coin!
