Eight ibexes from Switzerland should find a new home in the Bavarian Alps on Friday. They bring fresh blood to the ibex colony on the Benediktenwand, as the chairman of the district hunting association in Bad Tölz, Wolfgang Morlang, said. The stock of around 100 animals there originally descended from six animals and is now threatened by inbreeding.
The animals – “a buck and seven goats, all healthy,” as Morlang said – were caught on Wednesday in the high mountains in the canton of Valais, in the regions around the four-thousanders Mischabel and Weisshorn. Their journey to Bavaria via Bregenz began on Friday morning, accompanied by game wardens and biologists from the University of Zurich. You should reach the Isarwinkel in the early afternoon.
Tractors with snow chains were already waiting there to take the animals to the snow-covered Benediktenwand, which is around 1800 meters high, to be released into the wild. Sleet should make it easier for them to acclimatize without being disturbed by mountain hikers or paragliders in the coming days. The project shows that “hunters are also gamekeepers and conservationists,” Morlang said. The ibex are subject to hunting rights, but are protected all year round.
The alpine ibex was almost extinct in 1800. Today around 45,000 animals live in the Alps again, more than a third of them in Switzerland.
Bavarian wildlife portal Communication BJV on ibexes