THE WOLF - a danger for us humans?

In 1998, a pair of wolves was sighted again for the first time since the wolves were exterminated about 150 years ago, having migrated from Poland. Two years later, this pair raised pups for the first time on the Oberlausitz military training area. The foundation stone for the return of wolves to Germany had been laid. In the 2019/20 monitoring year, 128 packs, 35 wolf pairs, and ten sedentary individual wolves were now living in Germany again.

Again and again, people say that they are afraid of wolves or that something could happen to their children, even though they themselves have never encountered a wolf in the wild. But if we look at the facts, the issue should be quickly resolved, shouldn't it?

THE WOLF - can herd protection work?

In 2018, wolves killed 2,067 grazing animals, the fewest of which were protected by the herd protection measures recommended by the government. Nevertheless, 2,067 animals sound a lot at first, but converted to the number of wolves living in Germany, this makes up less than 1% of the wolves real food, which has also been confirmed by faecal samples.

Nevertheless, lately I have been hearing again and again from people that the wolf means the end of grazing livestock. But is the wolf really to blame for this, or is there perhaps a completely different reason?

FISH FARMS - the ultimate weapon against ecosystems worldwide

Fish farms are...good question, what are fish farms anyway?

Fish farms, also called aquacultures, are a group of huge net tanks that are anchored in coastal regions. In the Great Bear Rainforest on the west coast of Canada, but also in Norway, Chile and other parts of the world they are used to breed salmon directly in the ocean and later sell them to the food industry. Doesn't sound bad at first, does it? So at least there is no need to catch wild salmon with extremely high bycatch and the wild salmon populations can recover, right?

SHARK FINNING - the eradication of top predators

It was a beautiful evening on a remote beach in Costa Rica when a couple of fishermen came back from fishing. I was curious to see what they had caught. Three baby hammerhead sharks, one was still alive until they cut off its head and threw it to the birds. I took it to take some pictures, my first hammerhead, dead!

On average 7,5 people are killed by sharks every year. On the other hand, we humans kill over 100.000.000 sharks a year, but for what?

Mainly for their fins. These are used to make the so-called shark fin soup, a speciality that is mainly consumed in China. But shark is also used in cosmetics and dog food. Sometimes this extremely expensive product is relabelled and sold as ordinary fish.

PLASTIC vs. PLANET

Plastic, is in itself a great invention that makes our lives easier in many ways, but every day thousands of people and animals suffer from so-called single-use plastic. 

Have you ever wondered where all the plastic we use every day goes?
By 2015, we had produced 6.9 billion tonnes of plastic waste, of which about 9% was recycled, 12% incinerated and 79% ended up in landfills or in the environment (source: National Geographic Germany). Plastic has even reached the deep sea. Thousands of people and animals suffer from this plastic flood every day and it is up to each and every one of us to change this!