Europe’s political divide over the return of wolves

One afternoon in early April a mist descended across the Picos de Europa mountains in northern Spain, where Guadalupe Vada was out with her sheep.

At this time of year they graze in the lower peaks close to the village, before moving into mountains for the summer. As evening drew in, she left the flock of 800 for the night, guarded by eight Mastiff dogs, and returned home.

At sunrise the sky had cleared. Three vultures flew in circles high above the area where Vada knew the sheep were. “I thought, that’s it. Something’s happened,” she recounts. Heading to where the flock had been she saw that around seven sheep had been attacked.

During the night, a group of about 20 had become separated in the fog, leaving them vulnerable. “Of course the wolves took advantage, because when they see an opportunity, that’s what they’ll do,” she says.

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Wolves have always occupied the northwest corner of Spain, gradually crossing the Cantabrian range east into Asturias and farther south in the 1980s. But recently the population has expanded dramatically to parts of the country where they had long been extinct, sighted as far away as Madrid.

Thanks to wildlife protection measures introduced by the EU, once-threatened wolf populations are making a comeback. There are now about 20,300 wolves in the EU – up 81 per cent since 2012, and their range has grown by 25 per cent in the past 10 years. Wolves are now present in nearly all EU countries; Spain alone has more than 2,100, one of the largest populations in the EU.

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Wolves can bring important ecological benefits to the ecosystem, such as limiting the population of wild ungulates such as boar and deer that damage agriculture and forestry. Green legislation championed by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has included proposals to rewild large parts of Europe and allow the recovery of large carnivores.

But this triumph for conservation has put pressure on rural communities in areas like Cantabria, where there are fewer wild prey sources and pastoral farmers have to manage the growing threat to their animals, which spend much of the year roaming freely on the mountainside.

Little has been done by regional and national governments to prepare communities for life alongside wolves, says Hanna Pettersson, a social scientist at the University of York’s Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity. “If we’re doing rewilding, bringing all these species back in Europe, which is densely populated, how is that going to work on the ground?”

Policies regarding wolf populations are decided at a national and EU level with limited engagement with people in affected areas, she says. “One of the biggest sources of anger is the feeling that it’s something really impacting your life, and you cannot do anything about it. We have to find ways to make it work with local people. Forcing them top down, it’s never going to work.”

This anger encapsulates the frustrations being felt by many farmers and rural dwellers across Europe. When the European Commission launched a “long-term vision” for the bloc’s rural areas in 2020, a consultation for the initiative found that 40 per cent of people living in rural areas said they felt left behind.

Over the winter, tens of thousands of farmers protested across the EU over rising costs, cheap imports and climate-related legislation they felt imposed an unfair burden on rural communities. Mainstream politicians fear such resentment could pave the way for right-wing and Eurosceptic parties to make gains in June’s European elections.

There is little unity on how to address the issue of wolves. Conservationists eager to build on the successes of rewilding policies are struggling to find common ground with centre-right politicians and lobby groups pushing for looser restrictions on hunting to better control populations.

The issue of human-wolf coexistence is no longer just an economic question for farmers because of livestock attacks, says Juan Carlos Blanco, a biologist and wolf expert.

“It’s now a conflict of urban against rural, of left against right ... The wolf is in the middle of this fight.”

‘Strictly protected’

The wolf has had “strictly protected” status in the EU under the Bern Convention since 1979.

Under the bloc’s habitats directive, there is some flexibility for member countries to manage wolf populations depending on whether the wolf is categorised as “strictly protected” (under Annex IV of the directive) or merely “protected” (Annex V).

In northern Spain the wolf was in Annex V, meaning both hunting and culling were allowed so long as a “favourable conservation status” was maintained.

This changed in 2021, when Madrid declared wolves “strictly protected” across the country based on information and a proposal put forward by pro-wolf conservation group Ascel.

It argued wolves should be reclassified as “vulnerable” and included in the country’s list of protected species (LESRPE) because of their “scientific, ecological and cultural value”. The first part of the proposal was rejected but the government endorsed the wolf’s inclusion in the protected species list.

The proposal was then put to a vote among the country’s autonomous regions. It passed by a narrow majority but the vote was divisive; the regions with the most wolves voted against stricter protection, while those with fewer voted in favour. Rural communities say they have been forced to live with the consequences.

“A few years ago, if there was an attack you’d tell the [local authorities] and they’d organise a hunt,” says Vada. “It could be that they kill a wolf or scare them away. But now you can’t do anything, and there are more and more of them.”

She adds that attacks were previously confined to flocks high up in the mountains. “Now they come and attack when they are grazing closer to home ... every year it gets worse.”

Ignacio Martínez Fernández, president of Ascel, argues that there will never be too many wolves. “People have to adapt, and that’s it,” he says. “There is no reason to kill a wolf.”

Wolves mainly eat wild ungulates but they are highly adaptable animals. About 65,000 livestock animals are attacked by wolves every year in the EU, with the highest damage reported in Spain, France and Italy. While this is a small proportion overall – there are about 60 million sheep in the EU and only 0.065 per cent are killed by wolves annually – local pressure on rural communities can be high.

But while Spain has tightened its protection of the wolf, a backlash is stirring at the EU level. While green parties have praised Europe’s rewilding efforts, right-wing politicians hold up the wolf and other wild animals as totemic of a wider division at the heart of the bloc.

“This is a sincere political battle,” says Bas Eickhout, a lead candidate for the European Greens in the upcoming election. “The wolf has become a bit of a symbol of the concerns rural communities [have about] not being understood by the urban elite.”

Von der Leyen, whose conservative political group the European People’s Party has positioned itself as the voice of the farmers, backed a proposal in December to downgrade the protected status of the wolf under the Bern Convention that, if approved, would pave the way for a change to the habitats directive and give EU countries more power to control populations.

The president’s decision to back the downlisting proposal was informed by a report analysing the status of wolves in the EU, written by Blanco. But there may also be personal dimensions; von der Leyen’s own pony, Dolly, was killed in 2022 by a wolf known to German authorities. The president still keeps a photograph of Dolly in her office in Brussels.

As wolves are recovering, it seems logical that the policy should be made more flexible, says Blanco, but simply moving the species from Annex IV to V is “a simplification so big, I can’t be in favour of it. Especially when they suggest it months before the EU elections. It makes you think it is driven by a desire to attract right-wing votes.”

He’s concerned that if passed, the change could remove the funding and support initiatives currently awarded to species in the “strictly protected” category. Von der Leyen’s own animus against wolves “hasn’t helped”, Blanco says, and neither has her inference that wolves could be a danger to humans. “There are many studies demonstrating that wolves are not a danger to people,” he adds.

Any decision will be made at a meeting of the Bern Convention’s standing committee in December, which includes representatives from the 46 countries that make up the Council of Europe.

But first EU member states must agree that they want to make the proposal, with discussion ongoing about how the procedure should work. Spain is among the countries that do not support it, according to diplomats involved in the discussions.

Pettersson says the downlisting proposal shows that conservation has worked. But it requires a shift in approach from top-down protection to promoting coexistence at local level, she adds.

“There are legitimate concerns that some people might take the downlisting as an excuse to significantly reduce their population and undo some of the advances,” she says.

Mobile fencing

In the northwest of Spain, acceptance of wolves is generally high because they have never left. Joan Alibés, a sheep farmer in Galicia who also works as an adviser to farms, says more research and support is needed to help farmers protect their animals.

No method is ever going to be 100 per cent effective, he warns. “But studies show that when you do something, whatever it is, it will reduce attacks.”

For Alibés, mobile electric fencing works best for his 100 sheep. He moves them to a different area of pasture every five to seven days, and keeps them in this fenced enclosure with two dogs, which means they can be left safely at night.

More robust testing to understand what works and what doesn’t in different contexts is important, he says: “Every farmer works with their own system of moving livestock, so the measures we have to implement could be totally different.”

Conservationists have tried to tell farmers what to do without understanding the complexities of farming in a diverse landscape, he adds. “They say ‘if there are wolves, use Mastiff dogs’. But someone who has cows next to the Camino de Santiago [hiking path] can’t use Mastiffs, because they’ll have problems with people walking there. Or a farmer who has cows spread out across 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) – you can’t tell them to put up electric fences.”

Guard dogs are expensive to maintain and look intimidating, especially if they bark to protect their animals. Sometimes people assume the dogs are abandoned, adds Vada in Cantabria: “They take them home or off to a shelter ... I don’t know how they’re brave enough, because these dogs are huge.”

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EU funding mechanisms exist to support livestock farmers in areas where large carnivores are present, and it’s up to member states to decide how to spend them. Many, including Spain, prioritise compensation; €18.7 million is paid per year in the EU to compensate for damage caused by wolves.

But it does not fix the problem. Xuan Valladares, a former biologist turned farmer in Asturias, says he loses a few animals a year to attacks but never reports them. “When they do eventually pay out they pay what they consider an animal is worth ... apart from that there’s the emotional cost. Who pays for that? It’s not a question of money. We want [any] damage to be minimal and manageable.”

Farmers say there is currently too much bureaucracy involved, whether to claim compensation for attacks or to request that a wolf be culled by the authorities.

“You find a carcass of an animal and you have to prove it’s been killed by a wolf,” explains Pettersson. “Even if you can prove it, it takes a lot of time and bureaucracy to get it through.”

Valladares sees no reason why wolves would stop expanding as long as food sources are available and says controlling the population is necessary if extensive farming is going to work. When there is damage, farmers should be able to act with immediacy, he says: “Every time they attack, you give them warning, and they learn.”

“I’d ask for a bit more empathy from people,” he says. “That they understand, yes, it’s possible to have the wolf population in Europe but there should be control.”

Alibés has suffered attacks on his livestock in the past but he is wary of people talking about hunting or culling as the solution: “Am I going to go and get a shotgun and look for wolves? No, even if I killed one, there would still be wolves. It’s part of the risk I have to assume.”

Lethal culling

Most researchers and policymakers agree that some level of lethal culling is inevitable across Europe. There is little consensus, however, on its efficacy. According to the EC report, research on targeted wolf culling carried out in Europe is inconclusive – at best it solves conflicts only temporarily.

France, for example, introduced lethal control but this did not stop wolf numbers increasing and has not been proven to reduce attacks.

In an effort to understand how coexistence should work, stakeholder groups have formed in some European countries, bringing together farmers, conservationists and residents.

Grupo Campo Grande, set up in Spain in 2016, aims to resolve conflicts through mediation. “We put a face to the problem. We don’t talk about farmers in general, we talk about ‘this farmer, that farmer’,” explains Yolanda Sampedro from the group’s mediation team. “People often talk about numbers, which can be quite cold. They say, ‘very few animals are being attacked’, but how much does this matter to the farmer who just lost 20 sheep, whose flock has been destroyed?”

Wolves are just one more challenge for many pastoral farming communities “already at the limits of survival”, says Sampedro. “A problem like the wolf can push them into giving up and closing their farms.”

Alibés fears the burden of working out how to coexist successfully with wolves in different contexts will continue to fall on farmers. “Brussels isn’t going to tell us how to do it, we have to do it ourselves. But we need support in this battle.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024

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