Military airfield successfully relocates weasels and stoats
By the end of the year, weasels are to be settled at the Meiringen military airfield. The four-legged “field police” have the task of keeping the mouse population in check.
The smaller the mouse population, the fewer birds of prey circle above the airfield. «For flight safety, birds of prey must be kept away from the runway,» the airfield authorities state in the latest «Airfield News».
«The aim is to deprive the birds of prey of their food supply», Hanspeter Wyss is quoted in the «Berner Oberländer». He is responsible for environmental matters at the airfield command. Given the positive experiences at other military airfields, Meiringen also decided in favour of weasels.
A few years ago, those responsible for the military airfield tried using a professional mouser. Weasels may not catch quite as many mice as quickly, but unlike a mouser, they are always there.
Studies in 2016 showed that weasels already live at the airfield. Stone piles in which they can hide are now intended to encourage more weasels to move onto the airfield grounds.
«A weasel family eats 50 to 100 mice per week»
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
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.
