Germany clears the way for Europe to shoot more wolves

Ursula von der Leyen’s crusade against the wolf looked like it was on shaky ground. Then Germany’s environment minister stepped up.

At a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday, Germany decided to back the proposal to downgrade the protection status of wolves, ensuring its adoption by a majority of member countries.

The divisive plan, which still has a number of hurdles to clear before it becomes law, would make it easier for national authorities to grant derogations to shoot wolves that are threatening farmers’ livestock.

“This decision is justifiable from a nature conservation perspective and necessary from the point of view of livestock farmers,” German Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke — a member of the Green Party — said in a press statement after the vote. She claimed that “it is a success for nature conservation that we can make this decision today” and was a “pragmatic” response to the needs of farmers.

Farmers broadly back the plan, while conservation groups and many scientists oppose it. European Commission President von der Leyen, whose own pony Dolly was killed by a wolf in 2022, strongly supports the proposal, and Wednesday’s result is seen as a personal victory for her.

Germany’s left-of-center coalition government had initially been skeptical about the proposal, and its last minute decision to support it came with strict conditions, Lemke said.

“In talks with the EU Commission, we have successfully ensured that other species will not be affected by a downgrading of the protection status,” she said, adding that although downgrading the protection status will give national authorities more flexibility, “it is not a free pass for unregulated shooting.”

“The wolf is and remains a protected species, and its good conservation status is the goal,” Lemke concluded. Commission spokesperson Adalbert Jahnz confirmed the change concerns “the wolf and only the wolf” and would not affect other species.

But some national governments have their sights on other animals. Slovakia and Romania, for example, are now targeting bears.

Farmers happy, environmentalists worry

The proposal would lower the status of the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected” to give national authorities more flexibility to grant killing orders on animals that threaten livestock.

There are about 20,000 wolves in Europe, according to the Commission’s estimates, and the large carnivore is responsible for killing at least 65,000 heads of livestock every year, most of them sheep and goats. That figure represents just 0.065 percent of the EU’s total sheep population.

EU farming lobby Copa-Cogeca said it was pleased that EU institutions “are listening to the needs of farmers and rural dwellers despite the many pressures from those who often don’t have to deal with the consequences of attacks.” The European Hunters Federation also said that EU countries’ decision “opens the door for coexistence tools to ease tensions.”

But centrist Slovak MEP Michal Wiezik criticized Wednesday’s decision, writing on social media X that it is “a wrong step into [the] wrong direction” that threatens the long-term conservation of the large carnivore.

Wiezik, together with MEPs from the Greens, The Left and the center-left Socialists & Democrats groups, wrote to von der Leyen after Wednesday’s vote “urging” her to reconsider her proposal and instead support more humane measures to protect livestock.

Conservation NGOs and scientists had also been pushing back against the proposal, pointing out that, despite its strict protection status, the wolf remains in an unfavorable conservation state in six of the seven European biogeographical regions.

They now fear that decreasing the protection of wolves may be the first step of a larger push to weaken EU nature protection rules in the new Commission mandate.

NGOs accused EU countries of “endorsing personally motivated decisions that override scientific evidence, allowing President von der Leyen to use her political power for personal revenge against wolves and to please her farmer constituency,” in a press statement on Wednesday — a charge a Commission spokesperson Jahnz rejected.

Paula Andrés-Richart contributed reporting.