When it comes to hunting in the Berchtesgaden National Park, National Park Manager Roland Baier and his staff can’t seem to please anyone. On the one hand, organizations like the Wildes Bayern association have accused them of ruthlessly shooting chamois and other wild animals. The association is therefore even suing the national park in court. On the other hand, the Bavarian Supreme Court of Auditors (ORH) demands from the national park administration that hunting should be sharper, especially in the mountain forests around the Königssee. The ORH has now officially established that far too many deer, roe deer and chamois are out and about, especially at Königssee.
The ORH has extensively examined the Berchtesgaden National Park in recent months. The exam itself is nothing unusual. The ORH takes on all kinds of government agencies at more or less regular intervals. After all, he is concerned with the proper use of tax money, from which they finance themselves. When examining the national park, the ORH was not only concerned with the subject of hunting. But about all kinds of other topics, about the budget of the protected area, about the management and the research projects. The auditors’ report is classified. When and if it will be published at all is still unclear.
Hunting in the national park is very controversial. And not only with the club “Wildes Bayern” and its supporters, who mainly belong to conservative hunter circles. But also with forest experts. “We’ve been saying for a long time that deer are getting the upper hand, especially at the end of Königssee,” says a forest ranger who knows the situation in the national park well but wants to remain anonymous. “The animals chew on the young trees at an intolerable level, and have done so for many years.”
National Park Manager Baier knows the criticism. And he doesn’t contradict her. According to the current counts of the national park, around 400 red deer live at Königssee – to be precise around the wild feeding areas on the St. Bartholomä and Reitl peninsulas. That’s a record, 20 years ago there weren’t even half as many. “The population has grown significantly in recent years,” says Baier. “We try to manage them as efficiently as possible, but the numbers are exploding, especially in Reitl.” 155 red deer – this is how the ecologists of the national park have calculated it – is the upper limit if the forests at Königssee are to develop as naturally as the national park aims to.
Actually, hunting in the national park is taboo
It’s a complicated thing about hunting in a national park. And not just in Berchtesgaden, but in all national parks. Because the principle of “let nature be nature” actually applies in the protected areas, so human intervention is taboo. This also applies to hunting. On the other hand, the landscapes in Central Europe are so densely populated and have been shaped so intensively by human hands over the centuries that this principle cannot be maintained, at least not over the entire area of the national parks.
It is therefore customary to subdivide the national parks into so-called core zones and buffer zones. In the core zone – in the Berchtesgaden National Park it covers 75 percent of the area – there is no human intervention, so there is absolute silence on hunting. This is different in the buffer zone, which mainly stretches along the edges of the national park. In the forests there, the national park employees are allowed to fight pests such as the bark beetle, for example, so that they do not spread to the commercial forests that border the protected areas. And they are allowed to hunt if necessary. The two game feeding areas on St. Bartholomä and Reitl are in the conservation area of the Berchtesgaden National Park. You can hunt there.
“Our ecosystem should be able to develop as naturally as possible,” says the head of the national park
Although national park boss Baier is not talking about hunting. But of wildlife management. “Because when we shoot deer or chamois, we don’t do it out of hunting interests, for example in the trophies,” says Baier. “But so that our ecosystem can develop as naturally as possible.” As absurd as that may sound to some, there is logic to it. The deer at Königssee, for example, would naturally migrate far into the foreland in winter because they would have much more favorable living conditions there. But that hasn’t been the case for many decades. The foreland is too densely populated and fragmented for that.
In addition, the red deer were held back in the mountains long before the national park was founded – at winter feeding sites such as Reitl or St. Bartholomä. It is so used to these feedings that it congregates there in large numbers during the winter. The national park does not want to shake the winter feeding. Baier primarily mentions animal protection. If the feedings were broken, scores of deer would starve to death, he says. You don’t want that. On the other hand, Baier hopes that the feeding damage to the young trees in the mountain forests will not get out of hand completely. And of course he wants to avoid the huge outcry among the locals, tourists and not least among hunters, which would inevitably result from the abolition of the feeding.
The ORH is now demanding consequences. “The national park should reconsider its previous wild feeding strategy,” says a spokesman. “Furthermore, the regulation of game stocks should be carried out by exhausting all legal and personnel options.” National Park boss Baier does not want to comment on what that means. There are definitely possibilities. In the Bavarian Forest National Park, for example, so-called gate launching is practiced. The red deer that are to be killed in the vicinity of a feeding station are separated into a gate and then shot in the head piece by piece within a short period of time. The method is not only very efficient, but according to experts also conforms to animal welfare. Among hunters, of course, it is highly controversial.