The estimated number of wolves in France last year was 1,003, nine percent fewer than the year before, environmental associations said on Thursday, urging the French government to reduce the quota on the number of animals allowed to be killed annually.
The decline in the predator population is the first in almost a decade, according to loupfrance.fr, a site run by the French biodiversity authority.
“This new estimate reinforces the finding that the conservation status of the species is not good,” the six conservation groups wrote.
The current quota allows 19 percent of France’s wolf population to be legally killed.
But an administrative source close to the matter – who confirmed the figure of 1,003 – told AFP that current hunting limits would be maintained, allowing “209 wolves” to be culled.
The percentage is “based on the estimated population at the end of winter, which was 1,104,” said the source, who declined to be named.
The number of wolf attacks is also increasing, the source added.
In turn, agricultural groups argue that culling nearly a fifth of the predator population is still too low to prevent a growing number of attacks on livestock.
Wolves had disappeared from France but began returning in the 1990s, with farmers saying there would be 12,000 attacks on their animals by 2022.
“We expect an increase in the number of reports and victims by 2024,” said Claude Font, a representative of the French sheep farmers’ group.
“If we retain 19 percent of the estimated wolf population, we cannot stop the number of sheep being killed,” he said, calling for political action at the highest level to increase this percentage.
– ‘Increase in poaching’ –
But according to the president of the League for the Protection of Birds (LPO), Allain Bougrain-Dubourg, “wolves are being sacrificed on the altar of agricultural demagogy.”
In addition to the authorized hunting, “we are seeing an increase in poaching and poisoning,” he told AFP.
The National Wolf Group (GNL) meeting, scheduled for Friday, will bring together environmentalists, elected officials, public servants, the agricultural industry and hunters.
But several environmental groups withdrew from the organization in September 2023, calling the government’s 2024-2029 wolf plan “unacceptable”.
The proposal calls for more support for farmers dealing with the loss of livestock due to wolf attacks, a simplified population cull and a revision of the current counting system, an estimate prepared by the French biodiversity authority.
The wolf is categorized as ‘strictly protected’ in the European Union, but France’s new plan offers the opportunity to review the animal’s status.
In September 2023, Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, warned that “the concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger to livestock and possibly also to humans”.
For conservation groups, however, the decline in the wolf population is a clear sign that efforts to protect the predator are falling short.
The government must “stop advocating a reduction in the level of protection for the species”.
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