Animal protection Austria was given explosive information that makes you listen: In a country meeting next Monday, July 29, 2025, several federal states – especially Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Carinthia – try to agree politically to explain the so -called “favorable state of maintenance” of the wolf in Austria in order to legitimize the hunting hunting, which has long been practiced. This is despite the fact that the favorable state of preservation under EU law is clearly bound by scientific criteria that are not nearly fulfilled in Austria.
„What is planned here is not a cavalier offense – it is a political attempt to deceive at the expense of species protection law
“, Michaela Lehner, lawyer and head of the Staffpoint Law at Tierschutz Austria.”Scientific data will be ignored, owned your own specialist offices – and all of this, in order to enable even more kills contrary to the applicable legal situation. Austria killed more wolves in two years than Germany in twenty years!
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Few packs – not a favorable state of maintenance
In fact, the current one shows Status report 2024 of the Austrian center Bär, Wolf, Luchs – a state -mandated specialist office – clearly: only four reproductive wolf packs currently exist throughout Austria. In the last FFH report in 2019, the Federal Environment Agency also stated that the wolf only immigrated. There is no stable population that would be necessary for a “cheap state of maintenance”.
“As long as Austria has no functioning monitoring, there is no legally durable basis for evaluating the state of preservation – neither in the wolf nor in other species,” continued Lehner.
Paint protection sacrificed on the political altar
The debate is raised because EU member states of the European Commission have to present a so-called FFH report on the condition of their protected species and habitats every six years. The current FFH report is currently being worked out and was originally supposed to be submitted at the end of July.
The technical basis for this: a scientifically secured monitoring. But in Austria there is such a monitoring for the wolf and many other species in its infancy.
ECJ judgments: Politics plans public law
Several decisions of the European Court of Justice (UA C-601/22, C-674/17, C-629/23) emphasize that the favorable state of conservation may not be determined politically but exclusively on the basis of objective criteria. These include:
- enough, reproductive pack,
- a stable and growing distribution area,
- Suitable habitats of sufficient size,
- A standardized, long -term monitoring,
In any of these points, Austria fulfills the requirements – and yet the politically motivated explanation threatens.
„Anyone who levers European law in order to operate populism at the expense of protected animals endangers the credibility of our rule of law – and the trust of the population in environmental policy, endangers
“Leona Fux, biologist and species protection expert at Animal Welfare Austria.
Other species also affected
What is currently happening with the wolf is only the tip of the iceberg: the FFH report evaluates hundreds of animal, plant species and habitats-their evaluation has direct effects on protective measures, funding programs and legal scope. “If the FFH report becomes a political negotiating mass, entire ecosystems are up to them,” said Fux.