Wild animals need rest in winter. Feeding by people harms their health and attracts them to the settlements. In this way, predators such as wolves can also reach the villages. If you want to help wild animals in winter, you should respect their rest areas in particular. This is especially true in a time of pandemic.
Press release from the Grisons Green Table
Wild animals belong in their natural habitats, not in human settlements. With this simple message, professional associations from animal and nature conservation, forestry, agriculture and hunting as well as the responsible offices of the Canton of Grisons are jointly calling on people to respect the feeding ban.
Feeding doesn't help wild animals through the winter. On the contrary, they are harming their health.
Feeding can also lead to unwanted encounters with large predators. When wild animals search for human food, they also attract predators such as wolves and foxes and can thus bring them all the way to villages. In Bergün, a deer calf was torn by a wolf in the middle of the village in November. “We don't want wolves in the villages,” says Adrian Arquint, head of the Grisons Office for Hunting and Fishing. “That's why we're not allowed to offer game food.”
The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic can also damage game. Since the “lockdown” in spring, many people have rediscovered nature as a space for recreation and sport. This can be a problem for game when walkers, athletes and dogs disturb the wild animals' habitats.
To ensure that game gets through the winter as undisturbed as possible, the municipalities in Grisons have once again declared numerous game rest areas. They must not be entered, people and their dogs must stay on marked trails, freeriders and snowshoe hikers are urged not to leave their marked corridors and routes.
In addition to permanent wildlife protection zones, municipalities can also issue temporary protection zones if necessary. And should the winter be extraordinarily harsh, additional measures can be taken locally. In the forest, experts can cut down trees or lay out branches so that the animals remain in their usual habitats.
Feeding is prohibited because it harms.
Hoofed game, i.e. deer, chamois and ibex, is used to surviving the winter in its natural habitat with minimal energy consumption. Hoofed game, which is undisturbed, is spread in forests and on forest edges, barely moves and feeds on grasses, tree bark, needles and small branches.
This allows healthy animals to survive harsh winters.
If humans consciously or unconsciously offer them sources of food, the animals are still unable to resist: green waste in compost heaps, hay or defective sillobales attract deer and deer from the forests close to humans and endanger them on roads and railroad tracks.
The march to the food offerings also robs the animals of a lot of energy. Your body switches from winter rest to activity and needs significantly more energy. Improper feeding by humans can therefore cost an animal more energy than it can absorb through food.
“It sounds paradoxical, but it happens that animals starve to death due to feeding,” explains Adrian Arquint. “Often only the strongest animals get something at the feeding site. The weaker ones migrate with them, but go away empty-handed and then die in agony.”
The transmission of diseases is also promoted by human feed, explains cantonal veterinarian Giochen Bearth: “At feeding sites, there are often many wild animals close together or they even come into contact with farm animals. Diseases spread rapidly there and are affecting the game afterwards.”
The Grisons Green Table
Six trade associations and five cantonal authorities joined forces in 2017 to form the “Grisons Green Table” network in order to work together for wildlife-friendly solutions. The “Stop wild animal feeding” and “Game needs rest” campaigns explain and support the implementation of the cantonal feeding ban and are committed to the interests of wild animals.
More information: www.wildbrauchtruhe.ch
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