[MAK]

Earlier this week  the wire fence that we keeping in a pack of wolves was cut. The wolf park is within a forrest high above a town of 11,000 people and the terrain is very awkward to walk across. We are told that only one wolf is still at large.
I gather that since wolves returned to France there ar just a handfull of people who have the licence to shoot them. There are no reports of livestock being taken so I guess the wolf has found enough to eat in the woods.  Shame the wolves did not get the idiots who cut the fence.

[Lesley Silvester]

Animal rights people, no doubt. Have they no sense?


The island were I lived for eleven years is plagued with mink that are the descendants of some that were released from a mink farm. Not as bad as wolves, admittedly, but I wish the people who saved the lives of those mink could see the devastation after just one had been through a hen run. Or explain to my son, then aged eight, why his pet duck had no head and all the other ducks were dead.


Idiots.

[renee]

Here in Sweden there is a heated discussion about wolvs. They are on the increase and the animal rights people are against culling them. I am lucky that I live in a Sami reindeer feeding area . As th Sami have minority rights wolves are not tolerated. There was one roaming above the village last week. I was nervous for my sheep but the local government got a hunting licence straight away and sent a helicopter up to watcg its movements. Lucky for the wolf it was only migrating. I have a bear family in the vicinity but so far they are not interested in my livestock. They are not as bad as wolves as they only kill when they are hungry.

[chrismahon]

Wolves had been hunted almost to extinction for good reason. Quite why anyone would want to keep them in a park with the constant risk of some lunatic releasing them I can't imagine? Pleased they have got them, even though one is still at large MAK. This reminds me of the UK mink problem as well. Coupled with the allowed expansion of the fox population by the hunting ban and tighter firearm controls. We were victims of fox attacks three times. The thought of wolves wandering around the French countryside horrifies me, although based on our experience the Chasse dogs are are far greater threat to livestock than anything else. I have heard many tales of woe here caused by stray dogs, or dogs off leads as well. Lots of people have lost chickens and ducks to the extent that it is probably far riskier here keeping poultry than it was in the UK. Having said that though I have only heard of one hen being stolen from a pen!

[MAK]

I am not sure that France has any aboriginal population like Sweden or Canada who have rights to kill "protected" wildlife. Unfortunately Chris the wolves that crossed the alps back into France are protected will them heading your direction. It is illegal to shoot them unless you are one of the 6 people with a licence.
We have never locked our chickens or ducks away and have never lost a bird. However we do have a very active hunt around here and a stupid vixenne that announces herself whenever she passes nearby - our little Westie goes mad when she hears a fox and sets off all the hunt dogs chained up on farms nearby.
Feral cats,martens,stoat and even the vegetarian copyu have been blamed for  the loss of chicken by some people I have met - I guess that all the above are preferable to having a wolf in the back garden.

[chrismahon]

Can't imagine small details like 'illegal without a licence' stopping the French shooting them MAK. Everyone round here has vulnerable livestock. Pine Martens hate chicken wire, so the biggest threat from them is to your brake hoses which they chew to floss their teeth! When we were in Dordogneshire we tried our brakes before moving off.

[SallyintNorth]

Releasing captive animals, who probably won't know how to survive in the wild, is always a bad idea.  When it is done it needs to be done by experts in the context of a rehabilitation programme.

So I hope they catch your last wolf and get him back in his enclosure.

However, I am a big fan of wolves and always interested to hear about (proper) re-introduction and its successes and problems.

I watched a programme about the wolves they've reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the States.  They found some very interesting things.  Firstly, wolves hunt only to eat, they do not have energy to spare to hunt for fun.  They will use hunting and the prey they've caught to train the cubs to hunt, of course.  Secondly, because wolves are organised and live and hunt in packs, they hunt only prey which is large enough to feed the pack.  So they tend to leave alone small prey animals.  In Yellowstone this has meant they tend to feed mainly on the caribou.  Prior to the reintroduction of the wolves, the caribou had had no real predator and had wandered at will, drunk where and when they liked, and so on.  Now they have to be more cautious as there could be wolves about, and there has been a massive increase in biodiversity at all levels throughout the Park.  The caribou no longer destroy all saplings at the water's edge, so that woodland has come back down to the waterside.  This has helped the beaver, who now has more trunks available for dambuilding.  Beaver dams increase biodiversity up and downstream of the dams, and that in turn feeds larger animals, birds, etc.

So far I haven't heard of reintroductions where there are farmed sheep, and one would have to wonder whether the pack would find they could pick off as many sheep as they needed.   And of course things could be very different when there is a lone wolf having to feed himself - he'd take smaller prey, as he's only himself to feed and no pack to help him hunt.  But he would surely only take what he needs and not waste energy hunting for fun. 

[MAK]

Sally wrote: So far I haven't heard of reintroductions where there are farmed sheep, and one would have to wonder whether the pack would find they could pick off as many sheep as they needed.

In the paper today there is an article that details numbers of sheep killed by wolves near Paris. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/french-farmers-try-to-keep-the-wolves-from-their-door-8891789.html

We had wolves roaming in our area up until 1948 - I am not sure if they have captured the one from the Wolf parc near us yet.

[SallyintNorth]

Interesting article, thanks for that link MAK.

It raises the question whether the farmers should adapt to live alongside the wolf, rather than all wildlife being subordinated to farming.  It also makes the point that whilst they are estimating that 5000 sheep are killed each year in France by wolves, more than 20 times that number are killed by dogs each year. 

These are interesting times.  We are all now pleased to see more birds of prey in our skies, well maybe except those folks rearing ground-nesting birds for shooting   I'd love there to be wild wolves a-roamin' and a-howlin' again - but I wouldn't like them taking my sheep any more than the next farmer.   

[Marches Farmer]

Releasing animals back into an area from where it's died out or been killed sounds very noble on the surface but ignores the fact that habitats are now much more fragmented and the prey of predator animals may themselves now be under threat of extinction.  Also, of course, there are a lot more humans around, much busier roads and people who know nothing about livestock or wildlife and who don't care either.

[cloddopper]

Interesting article, thanks for that link MAK.

It raises the question whether the farmers should adapt to live alongside the wolf, rather than all wildlife being subordinated to farming.  It also makes the point that whilst they are estimating that 5000 sheep are killed each year in France by wolves, more than 20 times that number are killed by dogs each year. 

These are interesting times.  We are all now pleased to see more birds of prey in our skies, well maybe except those folks rearing ground-nesting birds for shooting   I'd love there to be wild wolves a-roamin' and a-howlin' again - but I wouldn't like them taking my sheep any more than the next farmer.   

Sally ,
Looking at the figures in a different way , you should perhaps be asking how many dogs are involved against a few wolves .

I bet the percentages come out very high for the wolf dinners as they need several pounds of meat per animal per day I'd say at a guess a far higher kill pro rata when  for the wolf when the animal  numbers are equalized out .

[SallyintNorth]

There's a big difference, clodhopper.  The wolves are killing to eat.  The dogs aren't.