No hunting on my property!
Right alongside the country road to Königswinter in NRW, Germany, lies an oasis. At its heart is a vast former clay pit, ringed with reeds. On the islands in the lake, ducks, geese, herons, and cormorants rest undisturbed.
Dr. Tilman Macke is 78, yet he strides across the terrain in rubber clogs and wind-tossed curls like a young man.
«Of course the roe deer are here, fox, badger, stoat, squirrel — all of them, naturally.»
Tilman Macke bought this four-hectare site 17 years ago. He is a biologist, a conservationist, and the grandson of August Macke. The paradise he named «Arche Lütz» after the stream of the same name brought him joy every single day — until the hobby hunters broke in. Through a hole in the fence. He points out the spot.
Hobby hunters trespassed onto Macke’s property
«And then they came over the ridge, stalked their way in, flushed out the ducks — which have to be shot in the air — and then the buckshot scatters, and that makes for a truly agonising death for the ducks.»
Trespassing on someone else’s property normally constitutes criminal trespass. Hunting law says otherwise: anyone who, like Tilman Macke, owns land outside built-up areas is automatically a member of a hunting cooperative. And by law, they must tolerate armed hobby hunters entering the property, erecting shooting platforms, setting traps, conducting driven hunts, and killing wildlife.
«It is simply a compulsion to kill that I find repulsive.»
For the biologist, there was not a single argument in favor of recreational hunting. He sought dialogue:
I said: Look, I’m doing conservation work here, I’ve created an oasis where even your roe deer can raise their fawns, and I do everything I can to keep the peace here. They said: This land is part of the hunting cooperative, that means compulsory hunting, and there’s nothing to discuss — we hunt here!
Application like conscientious objector status
Things got even worse for him. Behind the opposite bank, he points to the fox den where the vixen had hidden her young: “They just dug up a fox den and probably killed all the foxes — it's so revolting, to me it was pure bloodlust.”
Tilman Macke took the case to the administrative court and filed an application for pacification. As did — as of summer 2016 — a further 173 landowners in NRW. This emerges from a response by the NRW state government to a minor inquiry by FDP members of parliament. No current figures are available.
Legal battle won — Arche Lütz is pacified
An entire binder is filled with the legal dispute, which cost him several thousand euros. Like a conscientious objector of old, he was required to set out his ethical reasons in writing. He reads aloud: “Even in my youth, hunting disgusted me and I was outraged by the way hobby hunters present themselves to the public as conservationists. As a biologist, I saw no purpose in the practice of hunting. I was and remain convinced that a general ban on hunting would allow a healthy biological balance to establish itself in nature. There are many scientific studies that show, for example, that shooting foxes only results in the surviving foxes producing significantly more young in order to fill the gap.”
He won the legal battle. Today the land is pacified. Arche Lütz, as a private nature reserve, is one of the very few places in Germany where animals do not regard humans as their enemy, as Karin Lamsfuss of Deutschlandfunk writes. More on this in our dossier Hunting myths and on the topic Why hobby hunting fails as population control.
Listen to the report here:
