A wolf that bit a woman in Hamburg last week in the first such attack in Germany for decades has been released back into the wild, the local environment ministry has said.<\/p>\n
The animal was “fitted with a transmitter and successfully released” yesterday and is being “closely monitored”, the ministry said in a statement.<\/p>\n
State environment minister Katharina Fegebank said if the wolf wanders near a built-up area again, “hunters can intervene immediately if necessary”.<\/p>\n
Other options were considered for the animal, including having it put down or placed in a wildlife enclosure, but these were considered unfeasible for “legal and practical reasons”, according to the ministry.<\/p>\n
The wolf bit a woman in a shopping centre in Hamburg last Monday in the first incident of its kind since the species began returning to Germany almost 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
The 65-year-old suffered bite wounds to her mouth and cheek, according to the Bild daily.<\/p>\n
The animal had been sighted several times in different parts of Hamburg in the days ahead of the attack.<\/p>\n
Wolves were effectively wiped out in Germany by the mid 19th century, largely due to bounties and habitat loss.<\/p>\n
However, wolves migrating from Poland began settling again in eastern Germany after reunification, when stronger wildlife protections were introduced.<\/p>\n
An official study last year recorded 219 packs of wolves across the country, as well as 43 wolf pairs and 14 lone wolves.<\/p>\n
The German government in December backed legislation that would allow regular hunting of wolves in order to manage populations in areas with large packs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A wolf that bit a woman in Hamburg last week in the first such attack in Germany for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-516095","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}