FRANCE AUTHORISES FIRST WOLF CULL SINCE 1930S
PARIS, July 19 (AFP) – France on Monday authorised its first wolf cull
since the 1930s in order to reduce a colony of some 50 animals which
sheep-farmers say are wreaking havoc in the southern Alps.
Ecology Minister Serge Lepeltier told a news conference in Paris that
up to
four wolves can be shot by the end of the year if attacks on sheep flocks
continue.
The minister was unveiling details of a wolf “action plan” which was
drawn
up in recent months to resolve the competing demands of the farming and
environmentalist lobbies.
Exterminated in France before World War II, the wolf was reintroduced
in
1992 in the Mercantour national park on the Italian border, and its
population has since increased by 20 percent a year.
Sheep-farmers who bring their flocks to graze on the Alpine slopes
during
the summer months complain of the devastation caused by the predator, with
more than 2,150 sheep officially killed in 2003.
On Saturday a flock of some 140 sheep was destroyed after an animal —
either a wolf or a wild dog — drove it over a ravine near Beauvezer in
the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
The wolf is a protected species under European law and a cull can only
be
organised under strict conditions that do not endanger the survival of the
colony.
Lepeltier said the four authorised kills represent 10 percent of the
officially established population, which is of 39 animals, rather than of
the widely accepted figure of 55. He also said that if the first three
animals to be shot are female, there will be no further kill.
The government had initially planned to authorise the killing of
between
five and seven animals, but was forced to reduce the number under pressure
from environmentalists who want to see the wolf move beyond its enclave in
southeast France.
Lepelter said that he too wanted to see the wolf spread into new
habitats. “Given the dynamism of this population and the capacity of
the species to
explore and occupy new territories, it is illusory to think that the wolf
will stop on the banks of the river Rhone,” he said.