Mother in fear:

“A wolf howled right on my terrace”

A wolf (symbolic image) howled directly on the terrace of a detached house.

(Bild: Manuel Schwaiger (Symbolbild))

Scary scenes for a mother of two in the Amstetten district: On the night of the supermoon, of all nights, a wolf howled on the terrace of her house. The family has lived in great fear ever since. 

What sounds like something out of a bad horror movie became a bitter reality for a 28-year-old woman. She was in the house when she heard a wolf howling at around 7.30 p.m. on Thursday evening. "I live in a residential area, but near a forest. So I tilted the patio door to better localize the sound," she says. But even though wolf sightings in the Amstetten district had recently become more frequent, she didn't believe she had actually spotted an Isegrim. "It was right on the terrace," says the mother of two. 

"Don't let the children out without thinking"
However, the four-legged friend must have been very frightened himself. He ran off immediately before he could be photographed. But the shock is still deep for the Mostviertel woman: "Of course I'm scared for my children, but I won't just let them out without thinking." 

Gerhard Fallent, chairman of the "Wolf.Stop" initiative, also became aware of the case and contacted the woman. "It can't go on like this and it shouldn't come to this. How should this mother continue? These conditions are intolerable and unacceptable," he continues, calling for the Lower Austrian wolf ordinance to be tightened. "What if a child falls victim to a wolf," Fallent points out.

"The wolf belongs in the wild and period"
Alexander Schnabel, agriculture and forestry spokesman for the FPÖ Lower Austria, agrees with him: "The population is afraid. The wolf should be hunted, period." Just last weekend, a wolf is believed to have killed 14 sheep in Ybbsitz, also in the district of Amstetten. There were also recent sightings on the B18 in the Gölsental valley - a deer was sent in here.

The province of Lower Austria emphasizes that conspicuous wolves can already be scared off and shot without prior notification or approval. "To make this even easier in the future, the EU has also announced, at our instigation, that it will finally lower the protection status. This should make it easier to regulate the wolf population in future," it says.