Wolf hunting in Bavaria: Return of the wolf triggers an emotional argument

It was extinct in Germany for around 100 years, but since the turn of the millennium it has been back - the wolf. Since then, there has been a heated debate about whether our pet's relative should remain a dog or not.

These discussions also occur with other predators such as lynxes or bears, but with wolves it often becomes very emotional. This may also be due to his fairytale career as the bad wolf. The once strictly protected animal can now even be hunted again; some Bavarian districts are currently making use of this. Environmentalists are outraged by this.

When wolves roamed the Free State with increasing frequency around two decades ago, there were often fears that the animals could attack people. The Bavarian State Office for the Environment tries to counter such sometimes irrational fears with facts: "In the last 50 years, nine cases of fatal attacks on people have been reported in Europe, five of them by rabid animals," the authority reports about the wolves - and then immediately classifies: "For comparison: In Germany, 45 people died from insect bites from 2007 to 2009, and since 1989 there have been 40 deaths caused by dogs."

Wolf video fueled the controversy over wolves last year

A video from the Eichstätt district in northern Upper Bavaria showed at the end of 2025 that the reservations against the animals have not yet been overcome. Two wolves ran past a playground in a village that was abandoned at the time and were filmed. A number of people then called for the animals to be shot, even though nothing ultimately happened.

In March, the Bundestag cleared the way for easier shooting of wolves. The wolf was included in hunting law, and the Bavarian Hunting Association had also requested this. The hunters' association also calls for "the establishment of a tolerable upper limit for the wolf population in Bavaria".

When the Bundestag changed hunting law, parliamentarians assumed that there were now more than 1,600 wolves living in the Federal Republic. Animal rights activists are happy about the return of the wolves, but grazing livestock farmers are concerned about the safety of their sheep, goats and calves.

Wolf, who has been inconspicuous for years, could now find himself at risk of being shot

In order to calm the minds of worried farmers and shepherds, some district offices have now decided that individual wolves can be killed. It is currently hunting season in several regions of the Free State.

The Oberallgäu district has issued a general decree according to which wolf hunting is permitted in certain areas until October 31st. According to the authority, these are areas where livestock graze. But there should be no uncontrolled hunting of wolves. If a hunter kills a wolf in his territory, he must report it immediately and the hunt for further wolves should be stopped.

The Association for Nature Conservation in Bavaria (BN) has absolutely no understanding of the order. The BN criticizes that a wolf has been living in the border area with Austria for eight years and has never killed sheep or cattle there. "He is the only sedentary wolf in the Bavarian Alpine region - a region in which there have never been any wolf offspring."

The animal is known under the technical name “GW999m”. Experts provide the individual animals with such identifiers so that they can be identified using genetic engineering if wolf tracks are discovered. The last time there was a trace of the male “GW999m” was in April, when a cunning wild animal was discovered. The State Environmental Office in Augsburg has been investigating such evidence for many years and lists all evidence of wolves in an internet monitoring system.

This means that it is known that this wolf is actually a model that experts want - because it looks for its prey in the forest and not in the fenced pastures. «It's completely absurd. The claim that there is a risk of serious economic damage from a wolf that has never killed a farm animal is far-fetched," complains deputy BN chairwoman Beate Rutkowski about the hunting order.

The Oberallgäu is not an isolated case. The Ostallgäu district office has also designated 27,000 hectares of land along the Alpine chain for wolf hunting. These are areas in which farmers cannot reliably protect their animals due to the terrain, says Benjamin Schäling from the district authority in Marktoberdorf.

Wolf hunting not only in the Allgäu but also in Upper Bavaria

“Wolf hunting is permitted in order to prevent serious damage to traditional alpine farming,” he says. Here too, a maximum of one animal should be shot. “If a wolf is killed, the hunt immediately stops.” In addition, another 35,000 hectares were designated for hunting elsewhere in the district, and farm animals were repeatedly killed here.

In the Upper Bavarian Alps, the Berchtesgadener Land district office has decreed that a wolf can also be killed. Here too, according to an authority spokeswoman, this is justified by the fact that these are “unfenced” alpine areas. The BN sees this as insufficient justification here too. “Alpine areas that are difficult to protect must not automatically become wolf-killing areas,” says Rita Poser from the BN district group.

It remains to be seen whether one or more wolves will actually be killed in the hunting areas by the end of October. In any case, the BN believes that the old horror images of wolves from fairy tales are still haunting people's minds: "Little Red Riding Hood fantasies about wolves are simply no longer up to date," says the environmental association.