BERLIN—The wolf is back. While common in other parts of the world, in Germany, the wolf is still a novelty.
It was gone for almost 100 years. Coming from Poland to Germany, over the last decades the wild wolf population has been expanding all over the country, currently growing at about 36 percent per year.
Some are celebrating its comeback since the wolf is one of few native mammal predators in Germany. Supporters note that wolves help keep an ecosystem healthy by killing off sick and weak deer or wild boars. And by reducing Germany’s sizable deer population, they help with the natural regeneration of the forest. Forest decline has been a big issue in Germany in recent years.
Others say there are too many wolves now and want to give hunters the permission to shoot them.
With a rise in attacks on sheep and other livestock, shepherds, farmers, and horse owners are concerned that the numbers are getting out of control.
Germany’s largest nature conservatory organization disagrees.
“We will not have a huge amount of wolves in one area because they are strongly territorial. So they keep their borders of their territory free from other wolves,” said Marie Neuwald, policy officer for wolf conservation at NABU.
A wolf territory is around 100 square miles, inhabited by one wolf family of about eight animals. “This is not so much,” Neuwald said.
Others, however, are demanding active wolf management. That would mean setting a limit on the population, and allowing licensed hunters to shoot them by following a quota. Supporters point out that Germany currently has more wolves than are allowed in Sweden, Finland, France combined. Some estimates say the population is now at almost 1,800 animals. The last official numbers stand at 1,300.
“We cannot allow it at all that we reach this point where the wolf would regulate itself so to speak. That would mean having wolves roaming all over Berlin,” said Gregor Beyer, CEO at Forum Natur Brandenburg.
Forum Natur Brandenburg is a conservation group with member organizations representing 200,000 individuals and 6,000 farms and forestry businesses. It has developed an active wolf management plan for policy makers.
Last year, wolves killed over 2,000 farm animals. Beyer says unrecorded cases could up to 100 times that number since the animals displaced by wolves are not counted in the statistic.
Being a protected species, German law currently only allows shooting individual problematic wolves, those that repeatedly kill livestock or are aggressive toward humans.
The German government helps farmers with funding fences or livestock protection dogs, and compensates them for wolf attacks.
Some farmers and shepherds say that’s not enough and see wolf attacks as an existential threat.
“Ultimately, society as a whole has to answer the question: How many wolves can we afford?” Beyer said.
Some farmers say, even with more money and support, the extra work involved and emotional stress for livestock are not accounted for.
And in some regions of Germany, especially on the dikes on the North Sea coast, fences and dogs to protect sheep are not an option, local farmers say.
“I am pretty sure if we would focus on innovation, on trying different things, perhaps also on a different herd management. It will be possible to protect the sheep there,” Neuwald said.
One study showed that wolves live off only 1.1 percent from livestock and mostly prefer deer and other wild animals. Neuwald said NABU is working with farmers locally in several German states to help them to improve their herd protection.
It’s a divide between rural and urban populations. The wolf seems to mirror the German peoples’ yearning for unspoiled nature.
“We should declare, ‘Yes, we want to have wolves again in Germany.’ And then you just have to start to deal with the wolf in a sober way, like most countries in the world do, where wolves have always been around. And we still have a long way to go in Germany to become a little more dispassionate,” Beyer said.
No attacks on humans have been reported but some people are still concerned. While most Germans support the wolf’s return, some in the countryside have not yet fully accepted them.
On one point, Neuwald and Beyer agreed. They say all stakeholders need to get together and decide how to successfully manage co-existing with the wolf.
