Increase in the number of wolves in France slows: One Voice demands a stop to their slaughter.

According to the latest figures issued by the wolf-lynx network of The French Office for Biodiversity based on the annual winter survey, the increase in the number of wolves in France is slowing down and their territories do not cover large geographical areas. On Monday 20 July 2020 One Voice wrote to Barbara Pompili¹ to ask for the immediate suspension of the shooting of wolves. In addition the association, which works for the protection of animals, has complained to the Council of State about the experimental decrees of 26 July and 30 December 2019 allowing the number of derogations to their slaughter to be increased and easing the restrictions on the methods used.

Having considered for years that their return to France improves the balance of nature, not only is One Voice totally opposed to the shooting of wolves, which by their very presence enhance our mountain forests, but also strongly maintains that they must be protected at all costs. Wolves (canis lupus) are a protected species. Therefore in theory they should be protected.

However for years central and local governments have been granting ever more exceptions to this statute, which is supposed to protect them. Each year more and more wolves are slaughtered even though there is no evidence that the slowdown in the growth of their population correlates to a decrease in the number of attacks on livestock, which is the reason invoked by the public authorities. In 2019 our application was unsuccessful because it wasn’t ‘urgent’, according to the Council of State. However each year it is urgent for the wolves who die. On 6 February 2020 our application failed because of the low number of derogations granted at the time but by 15 July thirty wolves had died!

In 2018 our association had already contested the presidential decrees that transferred ministerial jurisdiction to the coordinating Prefect, making an already complex regulation threatening the protection of the species even more confusing. 2020 is no different. The increase in the number of wolves is now slowing down but the number being massacred is increasing.

There are several elements to take into account, the most important of which is the protection of the wolves that have returned to France of their own accord.

On the one hand, the increase in the wolf population in our country. The fact that wolves have crossed the Alps back to France of their own accord proves that the territory is suitable for them to survive. One Voice therefore welcomes their return.

Our opinion is not shared by sheep-farmers, who are always quick to focus on their own interests, the profit they make from the livestock that they send to the abattoir and the compensation paid by the State for the so-called damage committed by the wolves. Unfortunately the public authorities do not systematically make the payment of damages conditional on measures to protect the flocks.

On the other hand, protecting the wolves implies not arranging for increasing numbers of them to be massacred.

When the government decides on a quota of wolves to be killed each year out of the total population, even if it does not specifically use that term, preferring to talk about the ‘cull ceiling’, whereby the maximum number and the methods are fixed by decrees, it should involve both counting the exact number of wolves in France rather than estimating the number using a very complicated calculation and decreeing that the percentage will not increase from year to year. The numerical modelling applied is dangerous. One Voice is asking that the threshold of genetic viability of the species be taken into account and not the threshold of demographic viability.

By definition, if a percentage is announced as soon as the population increases, the number of wolves ‘to be culled’ will be proportionally greater. Increasing this proportion amounts to seeking to reduce the wolf population, which is, let us remember, in theory protected. We had already objected to any ‘quota’ of wolves ‘to be culled’, whether numerical or proportional, and we are even more opposed to such an increase, which already exceeds the maximum initially decided.

Finally, the only effect of shooting more wolves is to massacre them!

But in addition to raising the percentage, these experimental decrees introduce a relaxation of the restrictions on the methods that can be used to cull them. ‘Damage’ is increasing despite the increase in the number of wolves targeted, which are often scapegoats for dogs (attacks by which do not give entitlement to compensation). It is essential to study the packs and not fire into the crowd, a number decided in offices, whether they be presidential, ministerial or prefectoral. Wolves are social and intelligent animals and, like all other animals, including humans, they need to eat in order to live. They are an essential part of the fauna of our country.
 

Thirty have already been killed this year; according to our rulers there are still sixty ‘to be culled’. On Monday 20 July 2020 our association wrote to the new Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, Barbara Pompili, to urge her to suspend the decree concerned immediately and complained to the Council of State about the two decrees of 26 July and 30 December 2019.
 

1 – Letter to Barbara Pompili 20 July 2020

Translated from the French by Patricia Fairey