Wolf in Swiss settlements: Discussion for shooting

Wolves in settlement areas have been spotted several times since mid -April, some of them have been released for shooting. With this, old discussions flare up again. Will the wolf become a Swiss cultural asset now?

The wolf comes closer. Wolves have been spotted in the residential area again and again since mid -April: in Thun (be), in Visperterminsen (VS) or in Leibstadt (AG) they are sparse around the houses on the edges of the settlement. In the canton of Schwyz, a shooting is pending because a wolf has approached a farmer and is said to have lost his fear of the man.

Will the wolf become a Swiss cultural asset now – and is that a problem?

An American wolf picture

The fact that the wolf polarizes is not only due to the animal itself, but above all because it stands for. It is considered a symbol for the wilderness: an indomeable predator that carries all the danger and mysticism of nature.

This can now be romanticized and declare it as worth protecting – or stylize a huge danger to human civilization.

This picture originated in the United States, where environmentalists and nature enthusiasts experienced an upswing in the 1960s. Her image of an untouched nature as a contrast to civilization, closely related to a presentation of the wolf as a clever, withdrawn hunter, spilled over to Europe and Switzerland in the 1980s.

In fact, the wolf is a wild but cultural -affine animal. This means that he basically avoids direct contact with people. On the other hand, he is not afraid of the human infrastructure. Rather, he uses them himself to get forward more quickly at night via streets or to look for little lively houses in winter in winter.

More frequent sightings are possible, but hardly documented

The number of wolves in Switzerland has tripled since 2018. The existing packs have been prevented preventively for two years. The federal government determines a minimum stock with which the species could continue to survive. The remaining wolves can be shot from December to January. When this regulation was introduced via the regulation path, the Wolfs protectors screamed, spoke of massacres and decimates.

So far, however, little of this seems to have arrived. There are still over 300 wolves in Switzerland. Most of them don’t get to see, says Christina Steiner, President of the Chwolf association. Anyone who makes a wolf experience an exception.

Normal, striking or dangerous?

It is difficult to estimate whether there have been more wolves in the settlement area in recent years. The municipalities and cantons also report « simple », not as problematic views. At the national level, the Kora wolf observation center primarily documents when a wolf behaves conspicuously, an animal tears or is shot. There is no statistics for wolf directions in the settlement area.

The habitat of the packs now extends beyond the Alps to the Mittelland, writes Kora.

You can meet here and there too, says Christina Steiner. In itself, it is not striking that wolves are on the road near the settlement area, but completely natural.

Most of the encounters were “completely harmless” for Steiner. So you usually see the wolf at night, from the car, driving past, or from the window of your own apartment. So when there is little human activity and the animals were unobserved and thought in safety.

« In most cases, the wolf withdraws immediately when a person comes closer to him, » says Steiner. The wolf encounters of the past few weeks have long since been no evidence that the wolf had lost its shyness from humans: « If that had been encounters with foxes, nobody would have licked with the eyelash. »

The wolf opponents contradict this. In such statements, they see a trivialization: « The wolf is and remains a predator, » says Germano Mattei, co-president of the Switzerland association to protect rural habitats from large predators.

If the animals came too close to settlement areas, it is only natural that they took off their shyness. Obviously, the previous measures would not have been enough to stop stopping, says Mattei.

The authorities prefer to shoot too much once

The federal government describes wolves as problematic if they not only go to settlement areas once, but also regularly and specifically. If a wolf is no longer just straying around by accident, it is a deviation from its natural behavior, it says from the federal government. Then it could be that he also deviates from his nature in other areas. And for example, people can endanger.

Just like in Elm in the canton of Glarus. Two wolves were spotted there in January, which have repeatedly cut around the village bodies for weeks. Until one of the animals even approached a child playing – and was released to shoot.

At the same time, wolf attacks on people are a rarity. There have been around 500 attacks worldwide in the past 20 years. The vast majority is due to rabid wolves in Asia. Garwut is considered to be eradicated in Central Europe. Europe had not had a fatal wolf attack on a person for decades.

Most of the time it is difficult to prove that a wolf is specifically in the settlement area. However, the authorities tend to be free with shooting permits. Most are granted quickly, since the end of the wolf hunting in February there have been half a dozen permits.

The deadline for shooting is usually 30 days. And even if clubs such as Chwolf submit complaints, they have no suspensive effect. If the wolf is killed during this time, it is dead. No matter how dangerous it was – or simply scary.