Germany: Hobby hunter faces trial for negligent homicide

In November 2017, a then 20-year-old woman fatally struck an 81-year-old hobby hunter from Lower Saxony in the head during a driven hunt in the Forst Ballenstedt-Meisdorf forest in the Harz district.

The 22-year-old has been required to answer charges of negligent homicide before the Quedlinburg district court from 29 October 2019. As people are repeatedly injured or killed during recreational hunts, the animal protection organisation PETA is renewing its call to finally ban hobby hunting by law.

Luisa P. (22) comes from a family of hobby hunters. From earliest childhood she accompanied her father into the forest. At 16 she obtained her hunting licence. By the age of 20 she had already killed a dozen wild boar, hares and foxes. At a large group hunt in autumn 2017, she finally had her first eight-pointer in her sights …

Yet instead of the trophy stag, she is alleged to have shot a hobby hunter (81) on a neighbouring raised hide!

«How many more people must be seriously injured or killed before hobby hunting is finally banned?», said Nadja Michler, specialist advisor for wildlife at PETA. «Year after year, numerous tragedies occur because trigger-happy hobby hunters shoot around irresponsibly. It is high time that legislators intervene and put an end to it. For forest animals too, hunting is quite literally a state of permanent terror.»

Around half of Germans reject hobby hunting

Hobby hunters kill not only more than five million wild animals annually; serious hunting accidents also occur time and again. A representative Forsa survey conducted in 2018 on behalf of PETA confirms that around half of German citizens — 49 percent — oppose hobby hunting. The more than 380’000 hobby hunters in Germany are faced with only around 1’000 professional hunters, primarily forestry officials. In its current form, hunting encompasses numerous cruel practices, such as the training of hunting dogs on live animals, earth hunting, and trap hunting, in which many animals are literally crushed each year. Particularly during driven hunts, which also result in harm to many people, up to two thirds of wild animals do not die immediately, according to the Veterinary Association for Animal Welfare. With shattered bones and severe wounds, the animals often hide for days and die in agony.

Hunting is unnecessary from a wildlife biology perspective

Recognised wildlife biologists confirm that hunting is, from an ecological standpoint, not necessary. According to the renowned biologist Prof. Dr. Josef Reichholf, wolves, for example, do not need to be replaced by human hobby hunters, as animal populations living in forests regulate themselves through environmental factors such as weather conditions, food availability, and disease. The Canton of Geneva, where hobby hunting has been banned for over 45 years, is just one example of this. Here, nature regulates itself primarily on its own terms. The result: high biodiversity and healthy, stable wildlife populations.

Biologist Dr. Karl-Heinz Loske views hunting as a superfluous hobby that serves to satisfy the hunting urge of recreational hunters. When he obtained a hunting licence in his younger years, it quickly became clear to him that this had little in common with nature and species conservation. Today, Dr. Loske is a recognised expert in landscape ecology, for whom hunting cannot be justified from either an ecological or a moral standpoint.