By Mike Swan, GWCT Senior Advisor
Just before last Christmas the Guardian carried an article by Patrick Barkham under the headline “Wolf Hunting Could Return to Western Europe under EU plan.” As you might expect, the tone of the article was very much against the idea, and of course it conflated proposals on controlling wolf populations with ‘hunting’.
The comeback of wolves in Western Europe
According to the article, there are now 20,000 wolves across Western Europe, with the species having recolonised “many countries” including Germany, Belgium, Denmark and The Netherlands. Reading the article, I found myself nodding in agreement to a quote from Ursula von der Leyen.
She might be seen to have a vested interest, having lost a pony to a wolf attack, but her words still made sense to me; “The comeback of wolves is good news for biodiversity in Europe. But the concentration of wolf packs in some regions of Europe has become a real danger, especially to livestock.
To manage critical wolf concentrations more actively, local authorities have been asking for more flexibility.” So, there was a proposal to change the wolf’s status from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’, thus potentially allowing a degree of licensed control.
What does this mean for the UK?
This story has hit the headlines again in the last week or so, with a majority of EU states now having voted in favour of the proposed change of status.
So, what does all this have to do with us here in the UK, where the wolf is long extinct? Well, apart from reflecting the debate that might be had if they were successfully reintroduced, I suggest it has a much broader resonance in relation to reintroductions in general.
Conservation efforts including giving the wolf a highly protected status have clearly been a great success if there are now 20,000 distributed across Western Europe. Alongside the recolonisation of many areas, populations have dramatically increased in several countries where they were never quite extinct, like France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece.
The challenges of reintroduction and protection
This is all great, but what now? If we are realistic for a moment, we should understand that our ancestors did not suppress wolves for no reason. Wolf predation on livestock was the main driver, and we should also remember that there were no compensation schemes to claim against if you lost a sheep.
Even if there are compensation schemes these days, they miss an important point, and that is that farmers join the business because they want to grow food. Compensation schemes may help if there are problems, but they do not satisfy the basic farming ethos.
Reintroductions in the UK
So, let's come back to the UK, where quite a number of rare or extinct species are making a comeback; think beavers, pine martens, red kites and white-tailed eagles to name but a few.
Most have a highly protected status, and that is fine while they remain rare, but in all cases, they caused problems for people in the past, or they would not have been suppressed. Those problems have not disappeared with the passage of time, and as they recolonise the same difficulties are surely bound to arise.
The case of beavers in Scotland
This is illustrated beautifully by the ever-growing beaver population. About five years ago I was part of a GWCT group that went to the Tay valley area of Scotland to better understand the issues that had arisen as a consequence of the (illegal) release of beavers there.
With at least a decade at liberty, they had consolidated their position and were widespread in the area, with their range expanding, and numbers rising, despite considerable efforts by farmers to exercise some measure of control.
Farmers’ concerns and mitigation measures
My abiding memory of that visit was a view expressed by one farmer but echoed far and wide; “Please don’t change the status of these animals, they are a real problem to us, but at the moment we are allowed to shoot them and remove dams, so we can alleviate the damage.”
Since then, the Scottish government has given them European protected status, and the news is full of reports of the “scandal” that licences have been issued to those most badly affected for a small measure of control.
Before all of this happened there was a growing and expanding beaver population, despite all efforts at control. Meanwhile, if not exactly happy, most of the farmers and others suffering damage were reasonably content that they were free to address their difficulties, if at their own expense.
I am still wondering what there is not to like about that. As a beaver conservationist, you could see an expanding population, and as a farmer who wanted to prevent his winter wheat from being waterlogged because of a beaver dam, you were allowed to remove it.
The return of other native species
Now, I am not at all against the concept of having beavers back in the UK; far from it, I am altogether of the view that we should welcome the return of natives. By the same token, I am looking forward to my first sighting of one of the pine martens that are now recolonising the New Forest, even if they are also the result of illegal releases. I am also delighted to say that I have started to see white-tailed eagles from the nearby Isle of Wight reintroduction – the highlight was one circling over my own village last May.
Growing resistance to reintroductions
But, I am also very concerned that resistance to these returns seems to be growing, and I think that the main reason is an excessive approach to protected status. For those who are most likely to be adversely affected, there is a real concern that these animals come with a severe baggage issue, with no realistic prospect of being able to manage the problems they may face without resorting to breaking the law.
A call for pragmatism in management
So, for example, having pine martens back in my village will be great all the while they concentrate on killing the grey squirrels that raid my cobnut bushes every year. But, when they move into my chicken run and kill my hens, I will surely be less happy. Whatever, with their current legal status, there is no scope for me to even apply for a licence to exercise a measure of control.
Until we get real about these issues, and properly face up to what the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says about having a mitigation plan in place before starting a reintroduction programme, there will always be resistance from the real stakeholders. I suggest that most farmers, gamekeepers and other wildlife managers would be much more amenable to reintroductions if they could see the prospect of a more pragmatic approach to management when the inevitable problems start to arise.
Concluding thoughts: wolves and the EU
I once challenged a leading member of a pine marten reintroduction programme over this issue of mitigation, only to be told that there was no problem, because all their martens had radio collars, so any that caused trouble could easily be tracked down and rounded up. When I pointed out that the real success of the project would involve wild bred young with no radio collar, that would not be so easy to find and catch, there was a stony silence…..
This all brings me neatly back to wolves and the EU. Despite what the headline writers say, the proposed change of status is from “strictly protected” to just “protected”, thus bringing the prospect of licensed control when serious problems arise. As I see it, this is not a cause for concern or condemnation, but the inevitable and sensible result of an enormous conservation success.