The EU Common Agricultural Policy has the money to support livestock protection measures and mitigate the conflict. So is there space for wolves in Europe, and can we coexist with them? Yes. It’s actually not an ecological or economic question, but a societal one. So we need to treat it that way too. END #wolf #wolves

So it’s not about the number of wolves, it’s about solving the conflict for the stakeholders involved. This figure says it all: when you have livestock protection measures in place, the number of wolves becomes irrelevant.

Say policy decides that you can “destroy” every year 20% of the wolves in an area. There were 10 wolves, and you killed 2. The underlying conflict is not solved and you still need to coexist with 8 wolves, which requires exactly the same effort as coexisting with 10 wolves.

When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. So the first things that comes to the mind of many, is to cull. But since we collectively decided that there is a place for wolves and other biodiversity, there must be another way.

It’s about the social and societal aspects. The fault line is urban vs rural, and a feeling of loss of control and agency by rural stakeholders. It’s about farmers who cannot sleep at night because they’re afraid their sheep will be attacked, and there’s nothing they can do about it because "some EU bureaucrat thinks wolves are cute"

The EPP highlights numbers of livestock killed as unequivocal evidence that something needs to be done– Mic drop – but a close comparison shows that wolves have a marginal impact on livestock losses compared other causes. It’s not about livestock!

We’ve become used to designating protected areas (HD annex II) and deciding for which species these sites are intended . Suddenly large species (wolf, beaver, brown bear, …) re-appear and claim space outside of the intended patchwork, requiring us to actively coexist with them. This creates conflict with stakeholders who didn’t ask for this.

Some countries interpret Annex V very flexibly, forgetting that it still implies legal protection.
Downlisting wolves to annex V of the HD means wolves are still protected but can be hunted as long as the conservation status is favourable. In N-Finland (where wolves are listed on annex V), wolves don't even manage to reproduce because every dispersing wolf is legally shot. Think twice.

Downlisting wolves across Europe from Annex IV to Annex V (the "solution" for the EPP among others) still means wolves are protected, and population management is only possible if this doesn’t affect the conservation status negatively. Given the status reports, it would still require European wolf populations to grow.

The latest wolf status report (2022) shows that only three populations (Carpathian, Dinaric, Baltic) are out of the danger zone. All other are either Vulnerable or Near-Threatened. https://tinyurl.com/3r7vya7s