Overview
- In March 2026 the Bundestag placed the wolf under hunting law, a change that made limited lethal measures legally easier for local officials.
- On Sunday multiple Bavarian districts issued time-limited orders that allow the killing of at most one wolf in defined non-zäunbare alpine grazing areas with immediate reporting and an automatic suspension of further hunting after a kill.
- Conservation group Bund Naturschutz has sharply criticized the orders, pointing to a long‑resident male wolf known as GW999m that has no recorded attacks on sheep or cattle and is tracked by genetic monitoring.
- The Bavarian State Office for the Environment stresses that fatal wolf attacks on people are extremely rare and that regional agencies such as the Umwelt‑Landesamt in Augsburg continue scientific monitoring and investigations of wolf traces.
- The orders answer farmers’ concerns about losses to traditional alpwirtschaft but leave key questions open about whether any wolf will actually be shot and how local clashes between herders, hunters, and conservationists will be managed going forward.