Wildlife returns to Germany
November 9, 2007
The last wild beaver in Bavaria was killed in 1867, but, in 1966, Bund Naturschutz, a German environmentalist organization, reintroduced them, at first on the Danube. Up to 1980, about 120 specimens had been released into the wild, and today more than 6,000 live in Bavaria.
Even in the center of Munich, Bavaria’s capital, a beaver family lives happily on the river Isar, next to the German Museum. In my hometown of Furstenfeldbruck, 30 km (18.6 miles) from Munich, where the train bridge crosses the river Amper, you can see big trees felled by another beaver.
The news of a brown bear wandering from Tyrolia, Austria, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, was broken by the big newspapers in Germany last week.
The bear had come from South Tyrolia, Italy, and on its way had killed many sheep and damaged some beehives in search for honey. Politicians in Bavaria and Austria now discuss – should they kill it or catch it? Bears have also been entering Germany recently from Switzerland, but not to stay. Austria is home to about 30 wild brown bears, but the last one in Germany was shot more than 170 years ago.
The last wild lynx in Bavaria was shot in 1846. In the 1980s, the Czech Republic started to release some lynxes into the wild, and since the boundary fences of the Iron Curtain were removed in 1989 as the Cold War ended, many of these lynxes and their offspring started to migrate to Bavaria. Today about 20 lynxes live in the German national park “Bavarian Forest.”
Michael Gorbachev’s dismantling of the Iron Curtain also meant the freedom to roam for the wolf packs of Poland, which entered the former East Germany in the 1990s. At least two wolf packs remained there, and one overwintered in Saxony.
The raccoon, not native to Germany, was brought to German fur farms from North America, and in 1934 German forest workers released two raccoon couples into the wild.
Other raccoons managed to escape the fur farms, and their offspring in Germany now number roughly a million animals, even though 16,000 are killed by hunters each year.
Germany’s “raccoon capital” is Kassel, and the raccoons have not yet reached southern Germany. This seems only a matter of time, since they are breeding fast and searching for new habitats.
If you want to see some big wild animals, you needn’t visit Kenya or the Amazon rain forest – try Germany instead.
