Bavaria’s fishermen are demanding that the state government quickly enable the shooting of otters. “The unpopular topic has been treated like a hot potato for years, and no one really feels responsible for it,” says the chairman of the State Fisheries Association (LFV), Axel Bartelt. A look at Lower Austria and Salzburg shows that there is another way. “There are legally secure regulations there, on the basis of which numerous otters have already been removed,” says Bartelt. “This must also be possible here in Bavaria. We finally need a solution.”
Pond owners and fishermen have been making this demand for many years. However, the regulation that the state government issued in 2023 and allowed the shooting was immediately overturned by the Bavarian Administrative Court. Because otters are strictly protected. Obviously, killing unwanted otters is not as easy as fishermen and the state government imagined. Otters were a central topic at the fishermen’s general meeting at the weekend.
The animals can eat huge amounts of fish, which is why they are very unpopular with pond owners and were previously hunted mercilessly. For a long time they were practically extinct in the Free State, with the exception of a few specimens in the Bavarian Forest. The species is now spreading again. According to the State Office for Agriculture (LfL), around half of Bavaria – especially Lower Bavaria, Upper Palatinate and eastern Upper Bavaria – is once again populated by otters. After that, around 1,500 specimens live there. Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU) once estimated the damage caused by otters in these regions to be 2.7 million euros for 2022 alone.
That is the reason why the fishermen do not give up even after the shooting regulation failed. In addition to the new shooting regulation, they are calling for further measures – including an increase in the compensation fund, 100 percent funding for protective fences around endangered ponds and the expansion of monitoring. In addition, the state government should urge the federal government and the EU to lower the protection status for otters.
The latter is unlikely to be easy – the type falls not only under EU law, but also under other international treaties such as the Geneva Convention. Nevertheless, the state government announced that it would present a new shooting regulation as soon as possible. “The exact time has not yet been determined,” said a spokesman for Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (FW), who is responsible for this.