Germany plans to legalize wolf hunting to curb livestock attacks

Germany will permit wolf hunting after the lower house approved a law prompted by a fast‑expanding wolf population and a marked increase in livestock attacks.

The resurgence and expansion of wolves over the past thirty years has become a divisive topic in Germany, the country of the Brothers Grimm who made the Big Bad Wolf famous.

The danger from roaming packs frequently sets the left against the right and far‑right, and contrasts the densely populated west with the more rural, former East German areas where wolves are most common.

Although animal‑rights organisations opposed it, the draft bill passed the Bundestag on Thursday with support from the centre‑right governing coalition and the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland, which has long advocated killing wolves to safeguard farmers.

Hermann Färber of the Christian Democratic Union, the leading party in the coalition, told the chamber that a new equilibrium is required in Germany’s ecosystem. “The loss of grazing animals, frequently killed by wolves, is no longer a matter of animal welfare,” he said.

Members of the Greens and the far‑left Linke voted against the measure, which still needs approval from the Bundesrat upper house, scheduled to vote later this month.

The law would enable Germany’s sixteen states to allow wolf hunting between July and October in areas where the animals are especially numerous. Wolves identified as having killed or attacked livestock could be shot irrespective of their protection status or the hunting season.

The German act incorporates an amendment to EU rules that permits exceptions to species protection.

The amendment followed a 2022 controversy after a wolf killed Dolly, a pony owned by EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, near Hanover.

She subsequently called for a reassessment of the wolf’s protection level, which was later reduced.

The German Hunting Association approved the new law. The Working Group on Rural Agriculture, a farming‑sector lobby, described it as a modest step toward safeguarding sheep, goats and calves after a rise in wolf attacks.

Government data show that roughly 4,300 farm animals were killed or wounded by wolves in Germany in 2024.

The Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), Germany’s oldest and largest environmental group, urged the states to reject the bill in the upper house.

“Germany must not sacrifice species conservation for symbolic political gestures,” NABU wolf specialist Marie Neuwald said. She argued that, rather than culling, extensive herd protection—supported by subsidies for fences and guard dogs—is required.