AfD on the environment and animal welfare

The AfD wants better flood protection and forests that can withstand drought. It also wants to replant forests and do more to prevent wildfires.

The AfD wants better protection against floods. Forests should cope better with dry weather. New trees should be planted. There should be fewer forest fires.

The platform lists four aims: better flood protection, restructuring forests with drought in mind, reforestation, and stronger wildfire prevention. The AfD also wants to support research and development of technologies that help in dealing with climate change. The party presents this as part of what it calls a reason-based energy and climate policy.

The AfD wants a broad study into the causes of insect decline that also looks at wind power and solar installations. To protect ground-nesting birds and small game, it wants to test large insect habitats and step up hunting of introduced species such as raccoons.

There are fewer and fewer insects. The AfD wants a big study on this. The study should also look at wind turbines and solar panels. The AfD also wants to protect birds and hares. Hunters should hunt more raccoons.

In the AfD's view, insect decline is blamed too one-sidedly on farming, and flower strips have achieved little. The proposed study would examine wind power, solar installations, light pollution and land use as possible causes and point to countermeasures. Larger insect habitats modeled on those in Britain would be tested to help partridges, skylarks and hares. The Seebach bird protection station would get more staff and funding. Invasive species such as raccoon dogs, Egyptian geese, raccoons and giant hogweed would be recorded, controlled and reduced.

The AfD wants farm animals to be transported only over short distances to the nearest regional slaughterhouse. Animal testing should become less common through alternative research methods, and animal welfare laws should be consistently enforced.

Animals should travel only a short way to the slaughterhouse. The slaughterhouse should be nearby. There should be fewer tests on animals. Researchers should use other methods.

The platform backs species-appropriate husbandry and stresses that animals are creatures, not objects. Mobile slaughter units should be used more often and approved with less red tape. Veterinary authorities should have enough staff to do their job. On livestock farming, the AfD relies on close cooperation with farmers. In addition, the state should support the use of thermal-imaging drones that find young animals before fields are mowed.

The AfD wants to cut the number of wolves in Thuringia and across Germany, following the Scandinavian example, to prevent attacks on livestock. Species that once lived in the region should be reintroduced only if a long-term scientific plan exists.

The AfD wants fewer wolves in Thuringia and Germany. This should stop wolves from killing sheep and other farm animals. Affected owners should get money to make up for losses. Old species should only come back with a good plan.

The platform cites the Scandinavian countries as the model for reducing the wolf population. People who suffer losses from wolf attacks should be compensated in full and without much paperwork. For the return of the lynx, the AfD considers cooperation among everyone involved to be necessary.

The AfD wants the state to fund animal shelters better and to support volunteers working in animal welfare. More inspection staff and public information are meant to counter illegal animal keeping, which it links to online trade.

Animal shelters should get more money from the state. The AfD also wants to support volunteers. There should be more checks against illegal animal keeping. People should be better informed.

The platform notes that many animal welfare helpers rely mostly on donations. Shelters repeatedly have to take in animals from illegal keeping because of online trade. The AfD therefore wants more staff at inspection authorities, information campaigns and financial help for affected shelters. It also points to the financial difficulties many shelters faced during the COVID period.

The AfD rejects the industrial slaughter of animals without stunning and calls for a ban. It points to rules already in place in other European countries.

In ritual slaughter, animals are killed without being stunned first. The AfD is against this. It wants to ban it. Other countries in Europe have already done so.

The platform names Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, along with other European states, as models. The rejection refers explicitly to industrial slaughter without stunning. In the platform, the demand appears under a heading calling for a ban.

The AfD wants to reforest damaged Thuringian woodlands quickly and restructure them so they can withstand changed environmental conditions. Wind turbines should be kept out of forests as a matter of principle and permanently.

The AfD wants to replant damaged forests quickly. The forest should cope better with drought and pests. There should be no wind turbines in the forest. The AfD says turbines and their access roads destroy forest land.

For reforestation, the platform calls for enough staff and seed, ideally from the state's own breeding. The AfD supports more research on sustainable forest restructuring and a strategy to secure young skilled workers. It rejects wind power in forests because, in its view, turbines, access roads and grid connections destroy woodland. The state forestry agency should not primarily aim for profit but strengthen traditional forestry. Forest measures should be large-scale without harming native wildlife.

The AfD rejects new restrictions on hunting and wants to leave the state hunting law essentially unchanged. It considers the state government's "forest before game" approach wrong and opposes higher culling quotas.

The AfD wants no new bans for hunters. Lead ammunition should stay legal. The AfD also does not want hunters to have to shoot more and more animals. It says game animals belong in the forest. Fences and other protection for young trees are better.

The platform opposes a ban on lead ammunition and stricter rules for training hunting dogs and falconry birds. Hunters should be relieved of bureaucratic and financial burdens, and Hegegemeinschaften (game management associations) should be supported. Instead of higher culling numbers and shorter closed seasons, the AfD favors technical protection against browsing damage; it rejects a minimum culling plan for roe deer. The mouflon population should be stabilized. The party wants to abolish designated red deer zones so the associations can manage red deer across the whole state.

The AfD wants to bring the wolf under hunting law and manage its population on the Swedish model. Problem animals should be killed quickly and with little red tape to limit conflicts with people and livestock farmers.

The AfD wants hunters to be allowed to shoot wolves. The number of wolves should be limited, as in Sweden. The AfD says wolves kill sheep and other grazing animals. The owners of these animals should get help.

The platform does not question the wolf's existence but is concerned about its spread, arguing that grazing livestock is essential to the cultural landscape. To bring the wolf under hunting law, its protection status in the EU Habitats Directive would have to change. The AfD also calls for closer monitoring of populations, including wolf-dog hybrids. Livestock farmers should receive support.

The AfD wants to shield recreational anglers from additional requirements. Children and teenagers should be allowed to fish without their own license when accompanied by an adult license holder.

The AfD wants to make fishing easier. Children and teenagers should be able to fish without their own license. An adult with a license must be with them. New rules should only come if they truly help nature.

Restrictions on fishing should apply only if they are backed by science and actually benefit nature and biodiversity. Money from the fishing levy under Thuringia's fishing law should go specifically to projects that preserve and maintain bodies of water. The AfD sees fishing as a close-to-nature hobby that it wants to support.

The AfD wants to allow burning days again, meaning days on which garden waste may be burned. In the party's view, their abolition by the Left-SPD-Green state government ignores everyday life in rural areas.

The AfD wants to bring back burning days. On these days people may burn garden waste. The state government ended this. The AfD says this does not fit life in the countryside.

The platform calls the abolition an example of patronizing citizens. It criticizes that people now have to drive garden cuttings by car to distant composting sites. According to the AfD, this makes no sense from an ecological standpoint either.