Reading Part 6

For most of the twentieth century, wolves were absent from large parts of mainland Europe. Decades of hunting, combined with habitat loss as farms and roads spread, had pushed them out of countries where they had been common for centuries. By the 1970s, the wolf had become a creature of folklore rather than fact in places like France, Germany and the Netherlands. [1] That began to change in the 1990s, when a combination of legal protection and farmland abandonment in mountain regions allowed wolf populations in Italy and the Balkans to expand. Young wolves, in search of new territory, travelled hundreds of kilometres into countries that had not seen the species for generations. [2] Conservationists called it 'natural rewilding' and welcomed it; farmers, predictably, did not. The return has reopened a debate as old as agriculture itself. Sheep farmers in the Alps and the Pyrenees argue that even small wolf populations can cause significant losses, and that compensation schemes rarely match the real damage. [3] Yet ecologists counter that the wolf plays a crucial role in keeping deer numbers in check, which in turn allows forests to regenerate. Governments have responded with a patchwork of policies. In some regions, farmers are subsidised for guard dogs and electric fences; in others, limited culling has been authorised when wolves attack livestock repeatedly. [4] The European Commission has been reluctant to weaken the wolf's strict protected status, arguing that the species is still recovering and that population estimates remain uncertain. Public opinion, meanwhile, is sharply divided along geographic lines. In cities, where wolves are more abstract than real, opinion polls consistently show strong majorities in favour of protection. [5] Survey after survey finds that rural residents are far more cautious — not always opposed, but rarely as enthusiastic as the urban majority. What seems clear is that the wolves themselves are not going away. As long as forests remain and prey numbers stay healthy, the species will continue to recolonise its old territories at its own pace. [6] Whether Europe can find a workable balance between farmers, ecologists and a returning top predator may be one of the defining wildlife questions of the next twenty years.