The judges are discontinuing the procedure for the intended shooting down of the Traunsteiner Wolf. But they show that they too would have conceded the corresponding order from the Free State.
The Bavarian Administrative Court (VGH) was also convinced that the intended shooting of the Traunstein wolf would not have been legally tenable. The court has now made this clear. The judges have stopped the procedure for the corresponding firing order of the Free State. The reason is that the wolf was run over in the Czech Republic on the very day it was issued, and with his death both the shooting order and the legal dispute over it ended. But in their comments on the decision, the judges, like the Munich Administrative Court before them, make it clear that the shooting order contradicts the Nature Conservation Act and the Bavarian Wolf Action Plan and they would therefore probably have overturned it. The decision must therefore not only be seen as a rebuke by the government of Upper Bavaria, which issued the shooting order. But also as a setback for politicians such as Minister of Agriculture Michaela Kaniber (CSU), who had vehemently demanded that the Traunsteiner Wolf be shot down for weeks.
The Traunstein wolf had caused a great stir around the turn of the year in south-eastern Upper Bavaria. GW2425m, as the animal was called in official German, repeatedly killed sheep and goats in the Traunstein region that were housed on poorly secured pastures near farms at night. It also ran through the town of Bergen once in the evening. The wolf always kept away from people. The one time a young farmer approached him, he immediately fled. But farmers, local politicians, a number of deputies from the CSU and the Free Voters and above all Minister of Agriculture Kaniber deduced from the events that the wolf could become a great danger to people and demanded that it be shot down more and more emphatically.
On January 17, the government of Upper Bavaria issued the corresponding decree. The Bund Naturschutz (BN) and the Society for the Protection of Wolves (GzSdW) complained immediately and reached an urgent decision against them. The Munich Administrative Court came to the conclusion that in none of the known incidents did the wolf approach people in a way that was not typical of its species and that it therefore did not pose such a great danger that its shooting would be justified. The VGH now followed this view. Despite this success, the GzSdW wants to continue the court proceedings. “With its shooting order, the Free State has trampled on its obligation to protect the wolf,” says the organization’s chairman, Peter Blanché. “That’s why we want to have it clarified in due process that this shouldn’t be the case.”