Two arrested over shooting of wolf that wandered from Switzerland to Hungary — VIDEO

Police have arrested two men in connection with the illegal shooting of a protected wolf which wandered from Switzerland to Hungary earlier this year, the National Investigation Bureau (NNI) said on the website police.hu on Thursday.

The wolf, dubbed M237, had been tracked across Europe through a GPS collar it was fitted with, but in early April the signal was suddenly lost, raising the possibility that the wolf may have died, the NNI said in a statement.

An investigation was ordered into the case against an unidentified perpetrator for causing damage to the natural environment, the statement said.

Investigators concluded that the protected wolf had been shot dead by a group of hunters on April 1 on the outskirts of the border village of Hidasnémeti in the northeast.

The Hungaian perpetrators, one of whom was a professional hunter, removed the GPS collar from the wolf and threw it into the river, the NNI said, adding that the hunters had been aware that they had shot a protected animal. The authorities have yet to find the wolf’s carcass, they added.

The two men were arrested in the early hours of Wednesday morning with the help of counter-terrorism force TEK, as one of them had a legally-owned firearm.