The European Union is moving ahead with plans to remove some protections for wolves on the continent amid an increase in their numbers, which has also been accompanied by clashes between farmers and environmentalists.
Last Wednesday, ambassadors from 27 EU countries decided by qualified majority to relax protection rules enshrined in the European Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. The judgement is expected to be handed down in December, although EU ministers are due to formally vote on the bloc’s position in the coming weeks.
Farmers in many EU member states are increasingly angered by attacks by wolf packs on their livestock as the animals have gained a foothold in forests and fields close to farmland.
The issue was raised on the EU’s doorstep two years ago when a wolf killed a pony owned by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
On Wednesday, the Commission welcomed the preliminary vote and said that “adapting the conservation status would be an important step to address the growing wolf population, while maintaining the overall objective of achieving and maintaining a favourable conservation status for the species.”
Experts and environmental groups estimate that there could be as many as 19,000 wolves in the 27 EU member states, with large populations thought to be in Bulgaria, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania and Spain.
Wolves remain a “strictly protected” species in much of Europe, but their numbers are estimated to have increased by 25 per cent over the past decade.
From “strictly protected” to “protected”
Under the proposal, the wolf’s status would be downgraded from “strictly protected” to “protected” under the Bern Convention, allowing the EU to amend the Habitats Directive to make it easier to protect a species whose members, under current rules, can only be killed with special authorisation in exceptional circumstances. Green groups unanimously condemned the decision.
Last month, Dutch authorities urgently warned parents not to take young children into a popular woodland area near the city of Utrecht after two recent close encounters with a wolf displaying “atypical and disturbing” behaviour.
Over the past two years, a growing number of EU environmental rules and regulations have come under pressure from populist criticising the measures as having been invented by “urban elites with little knowledge of rural life.”
