The Swiss canton of Valais has already reached half of its wolf hunting target, shooting 17 of the animals in 18 days since active wolf hunting opened on December 1.
The Department of Hunting, Fishing and Wildlife was “satisfied” with this result, it announced on Monday at the request of the Keystone-SDA news agency.
In November, the State Council declared that the operation would be a “great success” if the canton managed to get “between ten and 15” in the next two months. With 17 animals killed, the canton has now shot half of the wolves it was targeting in just under three weeks. …
Why are they killing wolves? I didn’t see any context in the story.
Routine culling of the pack to free up natural resources so you don’t have starving young wolves wandering onto farms or into cities because they are desperate for food. This will also be done if the prey animals these guys prey on are having a rough breeding streak or were picked off by disease and as a result are less plentiful than they should be.
Makes sense to me. Most of what I know about wolves is about Yellowstone, USA where they were almost hunted to extinction. Perhaps Yellowstone could use some Swiss wolves!
Right under the first paragraph there is a link to another article, which explains the situation more generally:
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/how-many-wolves-are-good-for-switzerland-/48824708
Ah, thanks!