Halle: Criminal complaint filed against hobby hunter for killing a beaver

Lack of expertise costs a strictly protected beaver its life: A hobby hunter called in by the City of Halle (Saale) shot and killed a perfectly healthy beaver in a backyard in the old town in early April, despite protests from witnesses and residents, claiming it was a sick nutria.

According to media reports, the city administration has already admitted the error and initiated proceedings against the hobby hunter. PETA has now also filed a criminal complaint with the Halle public prosecutor’s office on suspicion of violating the Animal Welfare Act and the Federal Nature Conservation Act. In addition, the animal rights organisation is calling for the man’s hunting licence to be revoked.

«The hobby hunter was clearly unable to distinguish a protected beaver from a nutria. Unfortunately, the beaver paid for the shooter’s professional shortcomings with its life,» said Nadja Michler, wildlife expert at PETA. «This once again demonstrates how hastily hobby hunters are often willing to kill wildlife without consulting other wildlife experts. To prevent such a tragic incident from happening again, we urge the lower hunting authority to revoke the man’s firearms licence.»

Background Information

The Beaver is specially protected throughout Europe and may not be arbitrarily killed by hobby hunters in Germany either. We point out that from an ecological perspective there is fundamentally no necessity for hobby hunting, and that human intervention in the ecosystem destroys family groups. As a result, the hunted animal species reproduce uncontrollably and the natural balance is severely disrupted. The renowned biologist Prof. Dr. Josef Reichholf and other experts confirm that a natural regulation of wildlife populations living in the forest takes place through environmental factors such as weather, food availability, and disease. The hobby hunt as population control fails demonstrably.

One example of this is the Swiss canton of Geneva, where hobby hunting has been banned for over 40 years. There, nature primarily regulates itself. The result: high biodiversity and healthy, stable wildlife populations. More about the Geneva model at wildbeimwild.com.

Biologist Dr. Karl-Heinz Loske also sees hobby hunting as nothing more than a superfluous hobby that serves to satisfy the hunting urge of hobby hunters. When he obtained a hunting licence in his younger years, it quickly became clear to him that this had little to do with nature and species conservation. Today, Dr. Loske is a recognised expert in landscape ecology, for whom hobby hunting is justifiable neither from an ecological nor a moral standpoint.