Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference

After centuries of persecution, European wolf populations are recovering across many areas due to favorable legislation and the rise of the “rewilding” movement over the past few decades. The central mechanism triggering the rewilding of Europe was the European Union Habitat Directive, approved in May of 1992. The directive classifies the wolf as a strictly protected species and all EU-countries have implemented the directive in their legislation. Since the 1990’s, the number of wolves in Europe has steadily increased and the total number of wolves, excluding Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, exceeds 12,000 wolves. At the same time conflicts between farmers, wolf protectors and authorities are becoming more frequent. Wolves living in Central Europe, Finland and Scandinavia must cope with the fact that there are human settlements throughout their habitat. This results in a strong habituation to humans and a growing number of attacks against cattle and sheep under the cover of darkness as well during dawn, dusk, and night. The appearance of wolves in settled areas in broad daylight seems to be more and more the rule rather than the exception. While authorities explain this as being a part of the wolf's normal behavior, human tolerance in areas where wolves return is rapidly lowering. Wolves’ depredation on livestock, and especially a behavior called surplus killing, has resulted in several clashes between farmers and authorities in France and Italy. Surplus killing is a behavior exhibited by wolves in which they kill more prey than they are able to consume and then abandon the remainder. Incidents from Southern Europe show that a single wolf pack may kill hundreds of sheep in one single attack. In this paper I will review the implications of human-wolf coexistence in settled areas in different parts of Europe. I will highlight a number of problems experienced as well as solutions and their outcome.