lHistory repeats itself. The European Union has just welcomed, on September 25, the proposal presented in 2023 by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to review the protection status of wolves in Europe, undoubtedly to calm a agricultural world that faces serious socioeconomic problems. difficulties. The new French prime minister does the same. We can summarize his credo: there are more wolves, let’s kill more. However, we will not alleviate the suffering of breeders by slaughtering even more canine lupus.
Until now, the carnivore has been able to find a place in our ecosystems thanks to its status as a so-called “strictly protected” species, granted by the Berne Convention in 1979. Ursula von der Leyen is inspired by the ancestral hatred of the wolf to allege, without no scientific argument, its declassification to the rank of species “protected”. Which means a relaxation of the conditions for fatal shootings in a context in which, of the nearly 1,000 individuals estimated in France, 20% are legally eliminated, that is, 200 wolves per year, the same proportion as deer. , a huntable species. In terms of species “strictly protected”so we can do better…
Furthermore, illegal logging is already numerous and poorly quantified due to the prevailing silence. Sometimes they are accompanied by acts of cruelty, such as in Saint-Bonnet-en-Champsaur (Hautes-Alpes), where in 2021 a she-wolf was hanged at the entrance to the town hall; Those, both environmentalists and breeders, who would like to denounce these acts do not always have the expected support from public authorities. In 2023, estimates of the wolf population in France show for the first time a decrease of 9%, probably due to the “quota” (wolf plan) of current shootings and illegal shootings.
This desire to kill more wolves is totally anachronistic, even though the situation of coexistence has improved. What is the desirable objective? Kill more wolves or reduce breeders’ losses? If lupine predations increase slightly on a European scale, in France they will decrease in 2023. Things are certainly not perfect and require more studies and experiments..
Reduced damage
Breeders remain in a psychologically and economically tense situation, but since 2017 a stabilization, or even a reduction in damage, has been observed in France, despite the fact that the number of wolves has doubled between 2017 and 2023. The opposite does not correlate. necessarily with an increase in damage.
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