Exchange of experiences in Switzerland
In the beginning of September, Slovenia Forest Service organized an excursion to the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland with the aim of exchanging experiences with the association AGRIDEA on agricultural practices in alpine areas where conflicts with wolves occur regularly. Different profiles of participants attended the excursion, including foresters, biologists, farmers, livestock guarding dog breeders, representatives from the Slovenian Environment Agency and agricultural experts.
Throughout the excursion, experts and stakeholders had the opportunity to discuss challenges and ideas on how to improve damage prevention practices in collaboration with farmers. Colleagues from AGRIDEA presented their program which supports the use of livestock guarding dogs and gives a chance to livestock breeders to receive adult dogs for protection of their herds. We also visited different alpine farms which use electric fences to protect the animals. All these practices are similar to those used in Slovenia, but there is always room for improvements and the excursion was a great opportunity to broaden our knowledge and the view on the topic to improve damage prevention systems in Slovenia.
Experts from AGRIDEA presented us their damage prevention methods.
LGDs are used mainly to protect sheep herds.
We visited pastures with different types of electric fences used to protect sheep herds from wolves.
The Great Pyrenees (in the photo) and Maremanno-Abruzzese are the most common LGD breeds in Switzerland.
We visited an alpine pasture where livestock guarding dogs (LGDs) are regularly present with the herd of cattle.
