No Christmas Truce for Wildlife in Bavaria

For wildlife biologists and nature and animal conservationists, the matter is clear: anyone who hunts red deer beyond the winter solstice is causing forest damage.

Forestry operation demands even more culls

With the shorter days from mid-December onward, the metabolism of red deer, roe deer, and chamois shifts. Allowing the animals rest at this time also benefits young saplings, which are then barely browsed for food. Yet the Forstbetrieb Schliersee in Bavaria shows no interest in such expertise and promptly applied, right at Christmas, for a substantial retroactive increase to its cull quota.

Already in spring, state foresters had pushed through an expansion of red deer culls for the current year. The 300 permitted kills from the previous year rose to 350 red deer this year. Now the target is set to reach 390. As a rule, hobby hunters and hunting authorities base their assessment of the following year's cull numbers on the previous year's kills and counts at feeding stations. The Office for Agriculture and Forestry then adds its own figures on browsing damage to plants — figures that say nothing about the size or composition of wildlife populations, but must nonetheless be taken into account. Yet despite the fact that far from all of the already approved culls have been carried out, the forestry operation wants to shoot 40 additional animals. A minor sleight of hand makes this possible: the forestry operation simply killed significantly more young calves than had been approved — and thereby reached its overall target figures in aggregate.

Red deer live in highly social family structures

«It is important that these structures are not destroyed by culling, which is why regulations specify how many animals may be shot — female and male, young and old,» explains Dr. Christine Miller, a biologist who has spent decades working with large wildlife «Anyone who has as little command of red deer management as is evidently the case in this forestry operation should not be replacing the culling plan, but rather the minds responsible for thinking through how this species is handled. Red deer can be effectively guided and regulated! Anyone who only knows how to ‘hammer away’ should keep their hands off it!»

Lawsuit filed with the Administrative Court

The justification for the additional demand does not appear conclusive to the conservationists. The forestry operation states that the count was likely carried out incorrectly — that is, too few animals were counted. Wildes Bayern e.V. has therefore promptly filed a lawsuit with the Munich Administrative Court.