Wildlife crime: Northern Burgenland is a hotspot for illegal raptor persecution

In northern Burgenland, the density of predators is one of the highest in Austria.

The Leitha lowlands and the Hanság are home to a particularly large number of birds of prey, and it is precisely there that the documented cases of wildlife crime accumulate. This emerges from the recently presented wildlife crime report by the animal welfare organisations WWF and BirdLife Austria.

Between 2017 and 2025, 500 wild animals were illegally killed or injured across Austria, many of them protected species. In Burgenland alone, 57 cases are documented. Alexandra Dürr of BirdLife Austria explains the regional focus: in northern Burgenland, a very high density of birds of prey meets intensive hobby hunting of small game such as hares, which are regarded as the natural prey of the predators. From this conflict of interest, situations repeatedly arise in which protected animals are deliberately persecuted, poisoned or killed in traps.

The Burgenland State Criminal Police Office is responding with preventive patrols in the district of Neusiedl am See. According to Martin Ivancsics of the environmental crime department, hunting grounds are inspected and, with the help of NGO resources such as carrion- and poison-detection dogs, a targeted search is carried out for traps and poison baits that have been laid out. The cooperation with the nature conservation organisations makes it possible to systematically monitor suspicious hunting grounds.

Penalties are nonetheless rarely imposed. WWF and BirdLife point this out explicitly, and for this reason they are calling for external hunting oversight. Internal control evidently does not work, says Dürr, since the same hunting grounds repeatedly draw attention. Moreover, the statutory provisions on wildlife traps are formulated too imprecisely. The NGOs therefore demand a clear adjustment of the legislation.

Burgenland's state hunting coordinator Hans Peter Weiss stresses that there is «zero tolerance» for wildlife crime and that hobby hunting is willing to support prevention initiatives. Many hunters, he says, are committed to protecting endangered wild animal species in their hunting grounds.

From a species-conservation perspective, the situation nevertheless remains worrying: predators that are protected by law continue to be systematically persecuted, and the number of unreported cases is likely to be far higher than the documented figures. BirdLife speaks of a «very high number of unreported cases».