Drama about the wolf
A spectacular hike through Europe has come to a sad end in Hungary’s northeast. The wolf from Graubünden is dead, a hunter is said to have shot him down.
The regional portal boon.hu reported on Wednesday that a hunter apparently shot the wolf, which was equipped with a Swiss tracking device. The police initially did not want to confirm or deny this information. The portal writes of investigations that have been initiated; Just a few days ago, experts there pointed out that the wolf is recognized as a specially protected species in Hungary, which is why killing it can result in up to three years in prison. On Thursday afternoon, the police officially announced that they were investigating the offense of damaging nature.
The longest known wolf migration in Europe
In March, the Wolf Switzerland group spoke of the longest known wolf migration in Europe. The wolf “M237” belonged to the Stagia pack in Graubünden, where he was born in 2021. In June 2022, he embarked on his great, ultimately fateful trek that would take him through four countries. Coming from the Lower Engadine, he crossed the border into Italy in the same month. From South Tyrol we continued across Austria. In October, the young wolf was located in the Innsbruck area, and it spent the turn of the year west of Vienna. He had been traveling in Hungary since mid-February, where he crossed the Danube north-west of Budapest. This caused quite a stir on local forums, but some pranksters believed with conviction that the wolf had taken a bridge across the river.
“Death is more than the end of a life”
Unfortunately, the Swiss wolf friends hoped in vain that the journeyman would reach another known wolf population in the Carpathians after more than 2,000 km. Up until then it was actually just a “stone’s throw”. But it was precisely in the area of the Aggtelek National Park, near Hidasnémeti, not far from the border with Slovakia, that the fatal shot struck M237. As if the Swiss nature lovers had had a premonition, they wrote on social media just a few days ago: “In nature, death is much more than the end of a life. It is part of an ongoing cycle of growth and decay.”