Animal rights groups prepare EU complaint over wolf killings

Animal rights organisations are preparing a joint complaint to the European Commission over the killing of protected wolves despite their unfavourable conservation status, ORF reported. They also argue that regulations such as Carinthia’s risk-wolf regulation prevent them from participating in environmental decisions or challenging them in court.

The European Commission already opened infringement proceedings against Austria in 2014. Under the Aarhus Convention, citizens must be able to participate in environmentally relevant decisions or have them reviewed by a court, but animal rights groups say this is not possible in Austria.

Carinthia’s risk-wolf regulation, which concerns a temporary exemption from the wolf protection period, was extended for another three years in May. Andrea Hagn, spokeswoman for the animal protection organisation Anca, said non-governmental organisations could no longer challenge or review such regulations because decisions that were previously issued as individual administrative orders are now issued as regulations.

Hagn said the European Commission had recently asked Austria for clarification “in view of the high number of wolves killed in Carinthia and Tyrol”. The animal rights groups had not received information about their complaint from either the Commission or the Federal Chancellery because the regulations in question form part of the EU infringement proceedings.

The planned complaint will also address Article 14 of the EU Habitats Directive, which requires a favourable conservation status for wild animal and plant species. Hagn said the organisations would challenge the killings despite the wolves’ unfavourable conservation status and the lack of scientific evidence showing how the killings affect that status.

Animal rights groups in Carinthia had repeatedly asked whether such evidence was available before each wolf was killed. Hagn said they had been told that there were no records or expert reports showing the impact of a killing on the species’ conservation status. She also said authorising preventive killings violated the Habitats Directive.