The German Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, voted Thursday to reclassify wolves as a “huntable species” after the predators returned to parts of the European countryside in recent years.
An amendment to the federal hunting law will permit hunters to kill wolves in Germany between July 1 and October 31. Individual state governments must draw up their own wildlife-management plans and can decide how widely wolf hunting will be permitted in their regions.
The government defended the change in parliament by pointing to rising livestock losses: it said about 4,300 farm animals were killed or injured in roughly 1,100 wolf attacks in 2024, and that measures to protect herds cost €23.4 million ($27.2 million).
The legal shift followed the 2025 downgrading of the wolf’s protection status under the Bern Convention on conservation of European wildlife, which prompted an EU directive easing protections.
Some farmers have long pushed for stronger population control. Joachim Rukwied, president of the German Farmers’ Association (DBV), told the Münchner Merkur last year that there are “several thousand wolf attacks on grazing animals every year,” calling those deaths “agonizing” and arguing that reducing wolf numbers is necessary to preserve grazing livestock farming.
The move has provoked protests, particularly in the Black Forest region of southwestern Germany, where wolf recolonization has been far less pronounced than in the north. A December report from the Baden-Württemberg environment ministry found the state — Germany’s third largest by area — had only four individual wolves. Locals have even named one wolf “Grindi” and rallied against a plan to cull him after sightings near hikers; such close approaches are unusual because wolves generally avoid people.
By contrast, hunters’ groups in Lower Saxony, the country’s second-largest state by area, counted about 54 wolf packs in early 2025. The German Federal Documentation and Consultation Center on Wolves (DBBW) reports that wolf attacks on livestock rose from barely a hundred animals killed in 2006 to more than 5,500 in 2023, before falling to below 4,500 in 2024.
The decision to allow hunting has drawn criticism from conservationists. Sybille Klenzendorf, program director for wildlife in Europe at WWF Germany, says research shows indiscriminate hunting is unlikely to reduce livestock attacks and can be counterproductive. When breeding adults are killed, their young may disperse and wander, increasing the likelihood of targeting easy prey, she warned. “Hunting will not solve the livestock damage problem, unless they completely eradicate the wolf again, which they’ve said they will not do,” Klenzendorf told DW.
Klenzendorf also argues that the government — a coalition of the conservative CDU/CSU and the center-left SPD — is effectively declaring the wolf population recovered without the cross-border, population-level scientific assessments required under EU law. She notes many apparently suitable habitats in southern Germany remain unoccupied.
She pointed to alternatives used successfully elsewhere in Europe, such as electric fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and active shepherding, which have been revived in some Alpine regions. “It is doable: Yes, it is more work, and it does cost money, but on the other hand, bringing back wolves saves a lot of money on the side of forest restoration. There’s a lot less damage to young trees if there’s wolves around because deer and wild boar don’t stay in a certain patch if predators are around,” she said.
Edited by Rina Goldenberg
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