HAGUE.- A Dutch court ruled Wednesday that authorities can use paintball guns to shoot wolves in a busy national park to scare them away, since at least one of the animals began approaching people.
The ruling was a victory for the eastern province of Gelderland, which has tried to scare away wolves with paintball weapons. Wolves are protected animals in the Netherlands and hunting them is prohibited.
A wildlife protection organization that opposes the plan said it will appeal the ruling.
Two centuries after hunting made wolves extinct in the Netherlands, the animals officially returned in 2019, when a couple crossed the border from Germany and gave birth to three pups.
The European Commission announced last year that it is studying a modification to protection laws, given that breeders fear for their livestock.
Experts and environmentalists estimate that there are up to 19,000 wolves in the 27 countries of the European Union, with populations of more than 1,000 possibly in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain.
The Netherlands’ central district court said in its ruling that a wolf has been seen approaching walkers and cyclists in the Hoge Veluwe National Park and exhibiting “unnatural behavior.”
The park is a popular destination for walkers and cyclists and contains a world-famous art gallery, the Kröller-Müller Museum. It is also inhabited by deer, mouflon sheep and wild boars, animals that have suffered attacks from wolves in recent years.
The park recently posted a video on Instagram in which two packs of wolves confront each other, one inside the park and another outside the fence that surrounds it.
Source: With information from AP
