Federal Minister of Agriculture Alois Rainer (CSU) considers the planned easier shooting of wolves to be necessary. “We don’t want to exterminate the wolf in any way,” said Rainer on ARD.Morning magazine. “It’s about protecting grazing animals.” The loss of grazing animals puts an economic and emotional strain on their owners.
Rainer also justified his attitude with the growing number of wolves Germany. “We now have over 200 wolf packs in Germany,” said Rainer. “We have more wolves per area than Russia.” Consequently, it is “necessary” to intervene. Rainer specifically referred to the possibility of hunting the wolf “within a certain period of time” and “removing problem wolves in a legally secure manner”, i.e. shooting them. According to Rainer’s wishes, the state should also help with subsidies if pasture owners want to purchase fences and livestock guard dogs.
Criticism from animal rights activists
The Bundestag is debating the government’s plans to make it easier to shoot wolves in the first reading today. The Union and the SPD want to include wolves in hunting law. In this way, so-called problem wolves that jump fences and kill sheep could legally be shot more easily. The amendment provides for “regional inventory management”. This allows federal states in regions with many wolves to regulate their population. Wolf hunting would be possible from July to the end of October. Pasture owners welcome the plans, animal rights activists are strictly against them. The Federal Council will also have to deal with this.
The change in the Federal Hunting Act had the Federal Government prepared in December. In the draft law, the federal government writes that the sight of torn, sometimes still alive and seriously injured animals as well as the disposal of the carcasses is very psychologically stressful for owners. As a result, more and more grazing livestock farmers are giving up their profession, “even though their work is irreplaceable for landscape management, biological diversity and the preservation of rare animal breeds.”
In 2024, around 4,300 farm animals were killed by wolves in around 1,100 attacks. Expenditure on herd protection measures in Germany amounted to 23.4 million euros, plus around 780,000 euros for compensation payments for livestock attacks.
The easier shooting of the wolf was made possible because its protection status within the Bern Convention was changed from “specially protected” to “protected” in March 2025. had been downgraded. The Bern Convention is an international treaty of the Council of Europe on the protection of European wild animals and plants. The earliest version of the Bern Convention dates back to 1979.
