The German Bundestag voted Thursday to reclassify wolves as a “huntable species,” reversing the strict protections that accompanied the predators’ return to parts of the country. An amendment to the federal hunting law allows hunters to kill wolves between July 1 and October 31; individual state governments must now draw up wildlife-management plans and decide how broadly hunting will be permitted in their territories.
The government justified the change 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 follows a 2025 downgrading of the wolf’s protection status under the Bern Convention on European wildlife, which prompted an EU directive easing protections.
Many farmers have long pressed 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 decision has provoked protests, especially in the Black Forest in southwestern Germany, where wolf recolonization has been limited. A December report from the Baden-Württemberg environment ministry found the state had only four individual wolves. Locals even named one animal “Grindi” and rallied against plans to cull him after sightings near hikers — encounters that conservationists say are rare, since wolves generally avoid people.
By contrast, hunters’ groups in Lower Saxony, Germany’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.
Conservationists have criticized the move. Sybille Klenzendorf, program director for wildlife in Europe at WWF Germany, says research indicates indiscriminate hunting is unlikely to reduce livestock attacks and can backfire: killing breeding adults may cause pups and younger animals to disperse and seek easier prey, she warns. “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.
She also argues the government is effectively treating the wolf population as recovered without the cross-border, population-level scientific assessments required under EU law, noting that many apparently suitable habitats in southern Germany remain unoccupied. Klenzendorf points to alternatives used successfully elsewhere in Europe — electric fencing, livestock guardian dogs, and active shepherding — approaches that have been revived in some Alpine regions. She adds that predators can deliver ecosystem benefits, reducing damage to young trees by altering deer and wild boar behavior.
Edited by Rina Goldenberg
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