Back around 2006, Germany woke up to realize that they finally (after roughly 150 years) had a bear within the country....free and walking around. They were proud of the bear....gave him a name (Bruno), and went through roughly six weeks of happy feelings with Bruno. Then some farmers got into the mix....noting that Bruno was killing sheep, and fear/anxiety started to fester. So they turned around and hired up some Finnish bear hunters (a long story, they failed), and then they turned to just plain open season on killing bears in Germany (it meant Buno was doomed).
Over the past three years, I've come to note the same type scenario being played out with wolves.
ARD (German public TV, Channel One) did a good short update on the conversation taking place between conservationists and hunters.
What the experts say for sure is that roughly sixty packs of wolves now exist in Germany, along with thirteen couples (to become packs). For the sheep enthusiasts, this is a big problem.
Now it's reached the level where it's a political issue, which means you have to hear these discussions on public chat forums. Generally, if you went to working-class Germans....they'd classify the wolf issue as around problem number three-hundred or greater. For sheep-herders and conservationists....it's rated now in the top ten issues.
Politically? The FDP Party says the only logical answer is an open hunt.
The SPD answer? They say there needs to be both wolf protection and sheep herd protection. Naturally, the two protections aren't exactly capable of functioning but that's generally how most all SPD solutions work. They also voiced agricultural subsidies to be used to make sheep-herders happy....meaning you pay them off (another typical SPD answer for everything).
The AfD folks? They think there needs to be more research done on how to keep wolves away from humans. Course, they did also note that for small kids....wolves could be a potential danger, and even inferred they could hang around bus-stops to take kids (like some Brothers Grimm story).
The Green Party? They said there should not be any anxiety-filled debates. You should not scare folks was their theme.
The Linke Party? Compensation for sheep owners was priority number one.
If some German bureaucrat had a sense of humor....they'd go and suggest a dead sheep fund should exist and each time you found a sheep killed by wolves.....you'd get paid three times the legit value of the sheep.
My guess is that they will play out this political game for another year or two....until finally one day....some kid is attacked by wolves. Maybe the kid even records the encounter with his smart-phone. Once folks establish that wolves can attack people (especially kids)....then the whole good-wolf game will end, and some massive hunt will occur. Again, they might turn to Finn hunters to resolve this and prevent German hunters from getting their hands dirty.
In some ways, it's pretty tragic how this cycle starts, and how it ends. There's likely some epic five-star Hemingway-like novel to be written over some German kid by the last name of Grimm, some wolf nicknamed "Lucky", and a Finn hunter named Ossi.
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