The European Commission has proposed downgrading the protection status of wolves, potentially paving the way for hunting and localised culls.
ADVERTISEMENTThe protection status of wolves should be downgraded from ‘strictly’ to merely ‘protected’, the European Commission has proposed, in a move welcomed by the hunting and farming lobbies but vehemently opposed by conservationists.
In a report released on Wednesday (20 December), the EU executive estimated a current population across all but three EU member states of some 20,300, almost double the figure for 2012. It further suggested that around one in 1,500 of Europe’s six million sheep are lost to wolf attacks each year. The total for all livestock, including goats, cattle and smaller numbers of horses and donkeys is estimated to be “at least” 65,500.
Commission president Ursula von der Leyen acknowledged that the comeback of wolves was “good news for biodiversity” in Europe. The report notes that wolves help prevent ecosystem degradation and the spread of disease to cattle by trimming booming deer populations. “But the concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger especially for livestock,” Von der Leyen said.
The proposal to change the protection status of wolves under the Bern Convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats is needed as a preliminary step before amending EU nature protection laws. But conservationists say the data does not justify a change that could see wolves once again in the crosshairs of hunters’ rifles, and subject to culling where regional authorities deem them a threat to local farmers.
Léa Badoz of Eurogroup for Animals, an NGO, said there was “no scientific backing” for the move to change the status of wolves under the 1979 convention. “The proposal reflects a strategic, opportunistic and political move which raises concerns about its motivations and alignment with genuine policy objectives,” Badoz said.
Von der Leyen, who famously lost a family pony to a wolf attack last year, was accused of being alarmist in September when she stated that wolf packs posed a real danger “potentially also for humans”. Moreover, the Commission was criticised for giving interested parties less than three weeks to respond to a call for data on current wolf populations, on which the present proposal is partly based.
The WWF said in a statement that the proposal represented a U-turn by a Commission that last October opposed exactly the same proposal from Switzerland on the grounds that it would “effectively lead to the lowest protection status of wolf populations across Europe” regardless of local and regional differences.
Sabien Leemans, a biodiversity specialist at the WWF’s Brussels bureau slammed an “outrageous” decision that she, too, said lacked any scientific justification, and pointed the finger directly at the head of the EU executive. “President von der Leyen is deliberately sacrificing decades of conservation work for her political gain, echoing her political allies’ attempts to instrumentalise the wolf as a scapegoat for socio-economic problems in rural communities,” Leemans said.
But powerful interest groups back the Commission’s plan. The head of the farming lobby Copa-Cogenca, Christiane Lambert applauded its move on social media. “At last, the Commission heeds Von der Leyen’s call to better protect livestock against the danger of the wolf,” she said.
The European Federation for Hunting and Conservation, which claims to represent the interests of seven million hunters across Europe, said the proposed change in status would not alter the legal requirement to conserve wolves, and would allow for “adaptive management, which is more suitable for a species no longer threatened". The federation's president Torbjörn Larsson called for a broader approach covering other apex predators.
“While we welcome this news, we expect environment ministers to support the science-based proposal," Larsson said. "However, to ensure successful coexistence, we also need a large carnivore package including bear and lynx, with a focus on their protection status, revising European Commission guidance and the system of reporting conservation status."
The European Parliament adopted a year ago a resolution calling for wolves to be moved into a lower protection category under the EU Habitats Directive. But a potential change is still some way off: before the Commission can even table an amendment bill, its current proposal must be endorsed by a majority of member states then agreed among the 50 parties to the Bern Convention, which closed its last annual committee meeting earlier this month.
