| This week’s decision to downgrade the protection status of wolves and ease their hunting makes one thing clear: how non-committal the EU is about its very own biodiversity pledges. On Tuesday (3 December), the European Union finally secured a long-awaited victory over nature. Its proposal to loosen wolf protection was approved under the Bern Convention, an international treaty on wildlife conservation in Europe to which all EU member states - or half of the total members - are parties. The move comes less than six months after the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) – the EU’s flagship initiative to reverse biodiversity loss via species restoration – officially entered into force. The comeback of the wolves, which has apparently caused one too many headaches in Brussels, was just that: an intentional conservation effort resulting from years of European measures to protect the species across the continent. Sure, it has not been a complete success story. The species' recovery has been ongoing, with several wolf populations in the EU still not at a favourable conservation status. But the resurgence was not some wild accident: it came after wolves had become extinct in many European countries. The return of wolf populations was not a threat either. In a 2023 report, the Commission recognised that the "overall impact of wolves on livestock in the EU was very small," with the pressure concentrated in specific regions. It also found no fatal attacks on humans in the last 40 years. | 