By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – Switzerland gave five districts the go-ahead on Thursday to shoot wolves after reports of attacks on livestock, a move that will please many farmers but anger conservationists who say culls have gone too far.
The government said it had allowed the killing of three entire packs in southwestern Valais canton and of any members of another pack that roam beyond the protective borders of Switzerland’s only national park, in the eastern canton of Grisons.
Officials at The Swiss National Park said any significant reduction in the numbers of wolves would make it harder for them to control the numbers of red deer that were harming the forests.
“(We) take note of this decision with great regret,” the park’s management team said in a statement.
A rebound in the Alpine country’s wolf population to more 300 from less than 50 a decade ago – according to data from the Switzerland-based KORA Foundation – has prompted a fierce debate over how to regulate them.
Switzerland passed a law in 2022 make it easier to shoot the predators whose global comeback has also inflamed passions in the United States, France and Germany. The first culls were authorised last year.
Conservationists say Bern’s culls of the Grey Wolf are too broad, threatening both its survival in Switzerland and the broader European population that roams the Alps.
But farmers’ associations say they do not go far enough and are calling for stricter laws that would allow them to shoot wolves without prior permission.
The government said on Thursday that, under the 2022 law, it had approved requests for culls in Ticino, St Gallen, Vaud as well as Grisons and Valais, without specifying how many wolves could be shot.
It refused one request from Valais, saying the canton needed to provide more evidence of the predators’ impact.
The Grisons government said local hunters would carry out the cull and could begin straight away.
Last weekend, Swiss voters rejected a proposal to make authorities do more to protect natural habitats from pollution and development, dismaying conservationists.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
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