Wednesday 19 June 2019

France to step up wolf culls as population surges


JUNE 7, 2019
by Amélie Bottollier-Depois
Wolf populations in the wild jumped in France last year, a faster-than-expected increase that will prompt the government to increase hunting quotas and take other measures to protect livestock herds, officials said Friday.
The ONCFS hunting and wildlife agency said on-the-ground tracking and mathematical modelling had determined 479 to 578 adult wolves on French territory during this year's winter count, or an average of 530.
It was a 23 percent jump from the average of 430 adults counted the previous winter.
Wolves were hunted to extinction in France by the 1930s, but gradually started reappearing in the 1990s as populations spread across the Alps from Italy.
They are now found mainly in the Alps and other mountainous regions of the southeast, where most of the recent pack increases were found, as well as in pockets of central France.
But wolves have also been detected recently in the Pyrenees mountains that separate France and Spain.
The population growth has infuriated French farmers who say the predators are decimating their flocks, despite a series of measures financed by the state to limit the damage and compensation owners for losses.
Last year 3,674 wolf attacks led to the deaths of some 12,500 animals, mainly sheep.


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