Glances at wolves
Anthony Peregrine is relieved to find that these creatures, which once roamed wild in this remote part of France, now have their own fenced-in reserve
‘SO,” I said, staring beadily at a 110lb Siberian wolf that had just grabbed a lump of raw beef from my hand, “you’d really like to release these back into the wild?”
“Certainly,” beamed naturalist Gerard Ménatory, the founder of one of only a handful of wolf reserves in Europe, on the wrong side of whose fences we presently found ourselves.
“And has the project elicited much enthusiasm?” I squeaked (the wolf was returning and I’d run out of meat). “Not really,” he allowed.
My encounter with M Ménatory in northern Lozère in the south of France – the wildest and least populated region of the country – took place some years ago. But I was reminded of it by a film called Le Pacte des Loups – a huge hit in France last year – which tells the tale of the 18th-century Beast of Gevaudan, the most gruesome brute in French history.
Starring Samuel le Bihan and Monica Bellucci, the big-budget movie goes to town – special effects, gore, action, even historical accuracy – to chart a bestial reign of horror. Its success has not done much to promote wolf liberation, especially not in Lozère.
But let us start at the beginning. Gevaudan, the ancient name for northern Lozère, was, then as now, a beautiful, remote and unyielding land. Rural survival was a troublesome business. In the 1760s, it became rather more so as into the grandiose setting lolloped the Beast. The creature resembled a wolf but was reportedly the size of a donkey, with a huge head and teeth like knives. Swiftly and ferociously, it set about the local peasant population, showing a marked preference for women and children.
Anyone young and/or female and out of doors was liable to be grabbed and savaged. Wandering up a mountainside en route to shepherding duties, 11-year-old Agnes Mourgues had her head torn off, her chest, neck and shoulders gnawed to the bone and limbs spread over an alarmingly wide area. Mothers had infants ripped not only from their arms but also from their wombs, then devoured. All this is set down in local registers.
Alarm finally spread to the French Court, from where Louis XV despatched the nation’s finest hunters. Unsure what they were dealing with, they hired locals by the thousand and slaughtered wolves by the dozen. In vain. The human deaths continued, the toll eventually touching a hundred.
Then, in June 1767, a particularly large animal was shot and the terror stopped. There is, though, no agreement on what exactly this animal was. The records suddenly go vague. Speculation, myth and a sprinkling of lunacy take over. The film suggests it was an indeterminate wild creature, imported and trained by a madman to wreak perverted havoc.
The Catholic hierarchy saw divine retribution at work. Others have maintained it was an ape or a hyena, possibly crossed with a dragon.
But folklore and, more recently, historical research, have insisted it was indeed a wolf – albeit an extraordinarily big one. This better fits the frame. The locals know wolves. They roamed the countryside into the 1920s, and the imagination much longer. In a land of isolated hamlets and snowbound winters, wolf fears and fancies were easily fuelled. The Beast added superstar teeth to everyday terrors that gripped hearts until recently.
A very old chap I met in the village of Rieutort recalled how he’d been forbidden from playing in the woods as a child. “I don’t want you coming back half-eaten,” his mother would tell him.
No wonder, then, that M Ménatory never succeeded in freeing his wolves before his death a couple of years ago. Local opposition feared the land would soon be littered with dismembered toddlers. But his reserve, Le Parc du Gevaudan, still prospers, across 60 acres of mountainside bang in the heart of Beast country, near Marvejols. It’s now run by his daughter, Anne. While more realistic on the wolf-lib front, she is no less bright-eyed in defending wolves against the slanders of folk history. The Beast wasn’t a wolf, she said. Couldn’t have been. No wolf would attack humans if there were sheep and lambs to be had more easily. Indeed, wolves don’t attack humans, period. “There’s no authenticated instance in modern times,” she told me. Far from being all teeth and menace, wolves were sociable and caring. They looked after each other’s cubs.
As Mlle Ménatory continued her top-speed encomium, I studied a few of the 116 reserve residents. They were magnificent: loping lithely around their vast enclosures, looking both brighter and less threatening than, say, Rottweilers. They gave the impression that they would be ruthless only if it were unavoidable. The strength and speed were evidently in reserve – but carrying off women and children? I looked closely and couldn’t see even the biggest wolf on view making more than a couple of yards with an 11-year-old in its jaws.
Certainly, none bothered me when, for the second time in my life, I entered a wolf enclosure. Indeed, they paid me no attention at all. “They’re very intelligent animals,” said Mlle Ménatory.
And so, unsavaged, I left – first to the bite-sized county town of Mende and then up to the granite land of the Margeride massif. Like the rest of Lozère, this is wonderful, away-from-it-all walking country. You leave one of the stone villages and that’s the last you see of humanity for as long as you like.
You may, however, encounter a bison. The Lozère landscape lends itself to the untamed (especially in winter, when the snow lies thick) and few things look less tamable than the European bison roaming the 500-acre Bison Reserve near Ste Eulalie, 40 minutes from the wolves.
Visitors are ferried into the bisons’ domain in a horse and buggy. Before you know it, the creatures are looming out of the rugged forest like shaggy echoes of pre-history. These beasts shared space with mammoths. They are in all the best cave paintings. And now they’re at arm’s length and, thank heavens, merely inquisitive. An irritated flick of the gigantic head would buckle the buggy.
Six feet high and weighing a ton, Europe’s biggest creatures can outrun and outjump a steeplechaser. This is your only chance to see a proper collection in Western Europe.
They arrived here a decade ago, from the Bialowieska forest on the Polish-Belarussian border, the only place European bison survive in the wild. The idea was to establish a second bison centre, lest the first one be affected by illness.
They’ve taken to the surroundings as if they’d never been away. Then again, woods and mountainscape haven’t changed much since they were last here 1,500 years ago – except that their main predator, the wolf, is safely locked up.
My trail from Rieutort took me through woods, across upland pastures and down by rocky streams until I had no idea where I was. In the circumstances, and for all my new-found understanding of wolves, I – like the bison – was damned glad that the only ones in the region were fenced in 30 miles away.
Wolf basics
Getting there
Mende is 550 miles from Calais by road. The nearest airport is at Nîmes, about 90 miles away. Ryanair (08701 569569; www.ryanair.com) flies Stansted-Nîmes from £75.06, standard return.
Staying there
Domaine de Barres, 48300 Langogne, Lozere (0033 466 697100) is a country house restored and opened as a hotel/restaurant last year; facilities include a swimming pool and golf course; doubles cost from £50 a night. The reserve is closed this month, reopening on Feb 1, 10am-4pm. Admission is about £3.20/£1.20 adults/children.
Report filed: 11/01/2002