Image: APA/HANS KLAUS TECHT
The sightings of wolves, especially in residential areas and in broad daylight, are increasing. As reported yesterday, a wolf was filmed on Wednesday both in Gutau and in Selker (Pregarten district), partly right next to a housing estate. Many residents reacted to the sightings with concern. Upper Austria’s agricultural state councilor Michaela Langer-Weninger wants to take this uncertainty as an opportunity to accelerate the political discussion on how to deal with the increased occurrence of wolves in residential areas: “Wolves are neither rare nor cuddly toys. Rather, it is a predator that, in addition to food – preferably meat – also needs a correspondingly large territory as a habitat.”
You are following the development of the wolf population in our state and the increasing number of wolf sightings with some unease, Langer-Weninger said in a broadcast on Friday. Also because quick, clean intervention is hardly possible due to the current legal situation. “The wolf appears in Upper Austria almost every day. Too often for humans to be comfortable with, and too often for the wolf to be considered an endangered species. The EU should have got going long ago and should have revised the Habitats Directive,” says Michaela Langer-Weninger.
She therefore took matters into her own hands and is already having concrete measures developed that provide a handle for dealing with problem wolves that lack the natural shyness of humans: “I expect the results at the end of March. In any case, the goal is to ensure the safety of grazing and alpine animals, but especially for the population in the settlement areas.”
Source: Nachrichten
