Published52 minutes ago
Switzerland’s mountain farmers are disappointed and angry, because a cull of the country’s wolves has been put on hold by the courts.
The farmers say the proposed cull was vital to protect livestock and, ultimately, the future of Alpine communities.
Environmental groups argued it went far further than the law allows and could decimate the wolf population.
The case is being watched closely by other European countries. Most, like Switzerland, class the wolf as a protected species, but many are also seeing wolf numbers rising, and concerns from farmers along with them.
For much of the 20th Century, Europe was virtually wolf-free. The animal, which featured so often in frightening medieval fairy tales, had been hunted almost to extinction.
The wolf’s return to Switzerland in the 1990s, crossing the Alps from Italy, was at first celebrated as a sign that nature was rebalancing itself, after centuries of predation by humans.
But wolves need to eat, and Switzerland’s high mountain farmers soon began to notice their sheep were going missing.
Under pressure from farmers, the laws around protection were tweaked slightly to allow the killing of “problem” wolves – those known to have attacked livestock.
But in a 2020 referendum, voters reaffirmed the wolf’s protected status, rejecting proposals to relax the hunting regulations even further.
Since then, Switzerland’s wolf population has tripled to at least 300, with an estimated 32 packs
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