Culling is not a civilized solution to managing a nation’s wildlife, its biodiversity, its wealth.
Dogs are still one of the most effective detrerants of human-wildlife conflict in the Alps, protecting livestock from wolves. Yet the systematic removal of subsidies for breeding and training of such dogs and not disclosing details of culling operations can only lead one to imagine that certain groups of humans indeed indulge in culling as sport.
As one of the most advanced nations in the world, one would imagine that remote sensing technologies, on-ground AI-based sensors and a well equipped ranger force would be a go-to solution for early warning systems to mitigate human-wildlife conflict. But the mindset of the authorities do not seem to have evolved at the rate to technological advancement.
Lucie Wuethrich, Writer, campaigner and increasingly voluble volunteer:
The canton of Grisons has announced it will begin killing wolf cubs next month. And only once these young animals despatched, will the guns be turned on the adults. Helpless cubs can’t be left to starve to death in the absence of their parents. It behoves a civilised state to uphold animal welfare standards, after all.
Whole packs will thus be clinically extirpated though the canton won’t say which packs it plans to target, presumably so as to hinder any last ditch legal pushback attempts.
Switzerland’s second wolf cull comes on the heels of last winter’s killing fest which saw 45 of the country’s “protected” wolves legally shot in two months, sometimes using hunting devices and methods proscribed by cantonal laws.
This time the condoned slaughter will last five months, with the two most rabidly anti-wolf cantons, the Valais and Grisons, battling it out for lupine loss supremacy.
It promises to be a wildlife killing contest of Far West proportions.
To level the playing field, the Grisons is now also inviting its hunters (some 435 permits issued) to join the canton’s game warden in despatching these pesky predators which it claims are multiplying like proverbial rabbits and terrorising all in their wake.
Aspiring Grisonian wolf slayers will be given two hours to learn the skills required to track down and shoot their prey.
115 wolves are estimated to currently haunt the canton.
But not for much longer (cue Sergei Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf).
One savvy pack however has decamped to Switzerland’s sole National Park located, as luck would have it, in the Grisons, where it has tentatively been welcomed for its biodiversity boosting and red deer controlling abilities.
These qualities could be put to good use throughout Switzerland where the loss of biodiversity has been described as “alarming” and where surging ungulate and wild boar populations are causing equally alarming damage to both forests and agriculture.
But they will be squandered instead, along with Switzerland’s wolves.
And the Grisons of Davos and St Moritz fame along with the Valais of Zermatt renown will go on portraying themselves as bastions of nature and natural beauty while behind the scenes and under the cover of darkness, their wolves, those true icons of untrammelled wilderness, will be gradually but inexorably whittled away.
Image source: Peter Dettling – https://lnkd.in/eyrwXnND
His latest book is also available here: https://www.lufs.ch/
References: https://lnkd.in/e4ZiSmKB and https://lnkd.in/eqeR-sev (my thanks to Barbara Oswald for drawing attention to this)