What a fuss it was when the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) put the chamois on the early warning list of the red list of endangered species two years ago. Many hunters, but also one or two wildlife biologists saw their conviction confirmed that the bold climbers were in bad shape in the Bavarian mountains. “Catastrophic conditions”, “overhunted” and “unstable stocks” are their verdicts, sometimes they even speak of “eradication”.
The Bavarian Hunting Association (BJV) even started a sympathy campaign for the chamois with the extreme mountaineer Thomas Huber as a figurehead. It was already “five past twelve” for the chamois, Huber announced. The fronts are so hardened that the parliamentary groups of Free Voters and CSU this spring demanded a report from the state government by July 1 of this year.
The report has been ready for some time. Alone, it hasn’t been published yet. The 15-page paper from the State Institute for Forestry and Forestry (LWF), which reports to Forest Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU), is treated as classified information. Not even the head of the FW faction, Florian Streibl, knows it. Streibl was responsible for requesting the report, and he wants to request it now.
Only a few MPs and experts were able to see the paper. However, they were ordered not to pass it on and not to comment on it, says an expert who received the paper after persistent probing. The Greens politician and forest expert Hans Urban suspects that the reason for the reluctance is that the state government “does not want to bring about any new unrest between hunters, foresters and forest owners” a year before the state elections.
The report that the Süddeutsche Zeitung present, indeed offers plenty of cause for concern. He arrives at diametrically opposed assessments to those of the BJV and many hunters. The early warning level of the Red List is not a “hazard category in the narrower sense,” it says. “Accordingly, according to the BfN, the chamois is not currently endangered.” The sentence is in bold and has exclamation marks.
In addition, the LWF accuses the BfN that the inclusion of the chamois in the early warning list is “scientifically only limited”. Current research projects at the LWF indicate “long-term and short-term stable population trends” at least in the respective study areas. The only thing the LWF concedes are certain gaps in knowledge. At the same time, she points out that she has been running studies for several years in order to close them. With the research, Bavaria is making an “internationally significant contribution to improving the wild biological database on chamois in the Alpine region”.
It’s about the protective forests
Basically, the argument about the chamois is about the mountain forests and how they thrive. Like other wild animals, chamois do not only eat grass and herbs. But also the shoots of young firs and beeches. And very gladly. The consequence from the point of view of the foresters: In areas with many chamois, the animals can very quickly become a danger for the mountain forest. Especially in so-called protective forests. These are the mountain forests that are supposed to protect villages, roads and other traffic routes from avalanches, mudflows and flash floods. These forests are becoming increasingly important in the climate crisis.
In many places in the Bavarian mountains there are protective forests that have been so damaged over time that they can no longer fulfill their function. In order for them to thrive again, the Free State is pumping many millions of euros into their rehabilitation. And because he doesn’t want to jeopardize the previous successes, the hunt is particularly fierce in protective forests. A total of around 4,000 chamois are shot in Bavaria every year. The total number of chamois in Bavaria is estimated at up to 26,000. Many hunters vehemently dispute this figure.