Naturstyrelsen said Friday morning that a wolf was shot Thursday evening in Blåbjerg Plantage in southwest Jutland, after the animal walked toward a summer-house area near Houstrup.
At a press conference Friday morning, the Danish Nature Agency, Naturstyrelsen, gave a detailed account of the minutes before the shot. DR reports that the agency carried out the killing on its own property west of the Houstrup summer-house area, where it is permitted to shoot.
Naturstyrelsen said it did not yet have full certainty that the animal was the problem wolf that had been sought for approaching people in western Jutland. The agency had been in the area on recent afternoons and evenings, because that timing had given the best chance of locating the wolf.
Around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, a drone operator from the agency found not one but two wolves in a dense stretch of forest. Staff could not enter the area, so more employees were called in and positioned around it to wait for the animals to move.
The two wolves later came walking down one of the large roads in Blåbjerg Plantage, toward the summer-house area where an agency employee stood at a crossroads. Cyclists appeared behind the animals, which made firing irresponsible in that moment, according to Mads Jensen, deputy director of Naturstyrelsen.
August is not peak tourist season, but the gravel roads still carry cyclists and other visitors who come to explore nature in Denmark. As the cyclists came closer, one wolf sprang away instinctively and ran into the forest, while the other continued toward the employee.
The employee directed the cyclists away and then stepped into the crossroads to block the wolf’s path. Naturstyrelsen said the animal came as close as two meters and tried to walk calmly around the employee, who read it as heading into the summer-house area.
With no safe firing angle toward other forest users, the employee shot the wolf from 10 meters. As reported by Politiken, an employee of Naturstyrelsen shot the western Jutland problem wolf from that distance.
Rules behind the shooting
TV MIDTVEST has reported that wolves moving close to people in the Oksbøl and Blåvand area may be shot under the new rules, and it explained how a problem wolf is defined. Politiken has also reported that authorities recently received permission to shoot wolves near people at Oksbøl.
Wolves remain a protected species in Denmark. According to Styrelsen for Grøn Arealomlægning og Vandmiljø, permission to regulate a wolf can be granted only when there is no other solution, and only if the measure does not threaten the species’ natural distribution.
