2023-11-23 08:14:33
Germany Brandenburg
When wolves roam around the tree hotel
Brandenburg has the highest wolf density in Germany. This also creates problems for hoteliers who offer family holidays with animals. One of them is the “Tree House Hotel Uckermark”, whose owners have been unable to find peace since a pack began to infest their property.
As of: 07:14 a.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
By Kira Hanser
responsible editor travel/style/engine
Dead fallow deer: This animal was bitten on the neck at Gut Gollin in September
Source: Lisa Wurth
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When the guests are sleeping, the hotelier often goes on patrol at night. He cycles the five kilometers of fence, flickers his flashlight into the forest, and to be on the safe side he spends the night on a cot in a guard’s hut at the edge of the forest. Ever since a pack of wolves attacked his country holiday farm near Templin in the Uckermark, he has been constantly worried. About his animals. About guests staying away. About his existence.
“The uncertainty is the worst,” says Karl-Ernst Wurth. A good ten years ago he moved with his family from Verden an der Aller in Lower Saxony to Brandenburg. They built the estate „Baumhaushotel Uckermark“ with fallow deer and red deer, free-roaming chickens, Cameroon sheep, a few highland cattle and goats to pet. In summer, white storks nest here and cranes trumpet.
Today the estate is one of the best-known country holiday destinations in the northeast. Holiday guests will find closeness to nature here all year round. The six tree houses offer panoramic views of meadows.
View of the game: one of the six tree houses at Gut Gollin
What: Kira Hanser
Anyone who takes the time to observe fallow deer calves will notice that these animals, cheeping and beeping, come very close to the guests in a friendly manner. An idyll, particularly popular with urban families with children.
The usual anti-wolf measures are recommended to the hotel
This idyll ends abruptly on a September night. Everyone is asleep when the wolves come. They hunt silently. The pack, which, according to the bites, includes an adult wolf and two yearlings, digs its way under the two-meter-high wire fence.
They kill 24 fallow deer calves and mothers. They eat one and leave the others lying around as a food depot: This typical behavior is remarkably economical in terms of saving resources, i.e. energy. Wolves tear as a team much more than necessary in order to theoretically be able to return to the carcasses later.
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The holidaymakers are spared this ugly sight; wolf representatives and waste disposal specialists come between the guests’ arrival and departure. However, the hotel does not receive any compensation due to the lack of a protective fence. Instead, the usual wolf defense program is recommended: high electric fence with wire underneath, plus several livestock guard dogs.
The ministry has yet to respond to the objection that neither electric fences nor yapping, sharp guard dogs fit the concept of a family vacation. If you follow the logic, anyone who keeps livestock would have to protect their property from wolves like a maximum security prison.
Because Brandenburg has the highest density of wolves in Germany. According to the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation, there are currently 52 packs on the move. In second and third place: Lower Saxony with 39 and Saxony with 38 packs. 1,339 wolves are registered across Germany. Already in 2022, 4,366 farm animals were killed, 23 percent more than in the previous year.
In the meantime, the haunted tree house hotel makes do with sound in the forest as a deterrent in the dark – with a construction site radio that plays Berliner Rundfunk 91.4 at full volume. Unless the sleepless hotelier is on wolf watch again.
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In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is necessary, as the providers of the embedded content require this consent as third party providers [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (revocable at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can revoke your consent at any time using the switch and privacy at the bottom of the page.
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