These kind of poisonings will remain illegal, but conservationists fear the relaxation of protections will empower vigilante action. “Groups of farmers can feel more free to act against wolves because of the change in the EU law,” Angela Tavone, from Rewilding Apennines, told me when we met.
This view is shared by a coalition of NGOs, including BirdLife Europe, ClientEarth and the European Environmental Bureau. Instead of providing support for farmers living alongside wolves, the EU has allowed them to be culled. “Downgrading wolf protection is a misguided decision that prioritises political gains over science and will further polarise the debate,” say the NGOs. “It offers no real help to rural communities.”
Loosening controls and regulations on the protections of these predators can have all kind of knock on impacts, but allowing culling is not always bad, says ecology academic Adam Hart, from the University of Gloucestershire, who believes this could counterintuitively stop people from becoming vigilantes. “Giving people the ability to control predators when they cause problems can be a good thing because it shows them they have some control,” says Hart, who is author of The Deadly Balance: Predators and People in a Crowded World.
“It’s great to have wolves roaming the landscape, but then I’m not a sheep farmer,” says Hart, who thinks we should not assume that culling is the way forward, but it shouldn’t necessarily be taken off the table, either.
Hart adds that concerns of farmers need to be listened to and they need proper support (small farms across Europe, for example, struggle on razor-thin margins). One thing farmers have told me is that they want proper compensation for livestock killed by wolves, delivered quickly. If this kind of support was given, they might feel happier about sharing their land with wolves.
To get compensation you need to prove that it was a wolf responsible for your losses, and there is often no smoking gun in these cases. In the Apennines, I met a farmer called Cristian Guido, who believes he lost 18 sheep to wolves one night last October, but because he had no evidence he received no compensation. In Scotland, hill farmers who say eagles are killing their lambs face the same problem. This understandably builds up resentment.
A lack of evidence makes this story hard to report on: many conservationists believe they are being scapegoated, while farmers are frustrated that people think they are making things up.
It is the archetypal conservationist v farmer conflict, but middle ground needs to be found. Hart believes we need more research to properly understand the impacts of wolves on farmers’ livelihoods. “We need to be monitoring them closely, following their progress, and being adaptive in our approach. If we want to live in a landscape with predators – and I think most people do – we need to make hard decisions,” says Hart.
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