By Oliver Moore and Ashley Parsons
Following votes at both Council and in Parliament, the status of the wolf in Europe is being downgraded from “strictly protected” to “protected”. So what’s happened to conservation of this apex predator – and why? Oliver Moore and Ashley Parsons report.
What’s happened?
On May 8th, the European Parliament voted to amend the Habitats directive. 371 voted in favour, 162 against, and 37 abstained, in a vote on the European Commission’s proposal to lower the protection given to the wolf, from “strictly protected” to “protected.”
This, according to the Commission, brings the protection status of wolves in the EU in line with the Bern Convention. The Habitats Directive is the EU law that implements the Bern Convention.
The Council, Parliament and Commission are all aligned on this. The Parliament initiated the request, voted to use the urgency procedure, and voted on Tuesday 6th May by a show of hands to fast track its work on draft legislation to change the Directive.
The Council position adopted in April contained no changes to the Commission’s initial proposal.
All that’s left for the draft law to enter force is for the Council to formally approve the text – a text it has already agreed to. Then member states have up to 18 months to comply with the change.
What this means
Member States will have flexibility in categorising the wolf’s status. While “protected” species can still be hunted, formally, this must be “carefully regulated by Member States” and monitored as they must maintain the favourable conservation status achieved.
The Council maintains that monitoring measures “may lead to temporary or local bans on hunting.”
It also adds that “EU funding and support will still be available for coexistence and prevention measures and state aids for compensating affected farmers may remain in place” and that member states may in fact still list the wolf “as a strictly protected species in their national legislation” and “have stricter measures in place for its protection.”
Justifying the adjustment, the Council claimed that the returning wolf is a victim of its own success:
“The conservation status of the wolf has shown a positive trend over the last few decades. The species has successfully recovered across the European continent, and the estimated population has almost doubled in 10 years (from 11,193 in 2012 to 20,300 in 2023).”
This however has “led to socio-economic challenges, in particular as regards coexistence with human activities and damage to livestock. According to the latest available data from member states, wolves are estimated to kill at least 65,500 heads of livestock each year in the EU,” it claims.
Initial feedback
In the Parliament’s press conference the day before its vote, Herbert Dorfmann (EPP Group Spokesman for Agriculture and Rural Development) sardonically invited scientists to go “out from the university and stay the whole summer, day and night, with sheep outside and look if the wolf is coming.”
While acknowledging that people haven’t been killed in recent decades by wolf attacks, his colleague Peter Liese MEP (EPP Group Spokesman for Climate and Environment) nonetheless claimed that “the wolf endangers biodiversity” as livestock farming outdoors in the mountains is more difficult.
Signalling that the EPP isn’t finished yet, Liese added: “There are definitely examples like the Cormoran or the Crow where we could consider the same [as the wolf],” he stated, adding: “But that is not for today, that is for later after a careful analysis.”
NGOs and many scientists, on the other hand, are exasperated, both with the initial Bern downgrading of the wolf and the EU’s processes.
A letter signed by 80 NGOs sent to the Contracting Parties of the Bern Convention stated that “the 2024 Decision to downgrade wolf protection, lacking scientific basis, must be reversed. The Bern Convention must maintain independence from EU political influence”.
The letter refers back to earlier communications which becry the lack of scientific evidence for this downgrading.
Instead “a non-science-based alert” to the wolf situation put the topic on the agenda of legislators thanks to a September 2023 press statement from Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen. This termed “the concentration of wolf packs in some European regions a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans.”
The joint letters from NGOs flatly refute this: hundreds of scientists have signed letters opposing the lack of scientific engagement in the process and the downgrading of the wolf.
On the ground
New research from Poland (published April 26th 2025) questions just how likely wolves are to attack livestock.
In an area with a total of 4,700 outdoor cattle and horses, over a two-year period, only three calves were likely to have been killed by wolves. No horse attacks were recorded.
Instead, the research pointed out that wolves mainly fed on wild prey – and may even have mostly scavenged the tiny portions of livestock in their diets.
These findings were similar to those in “six other study areas within the Central European wolf population” the researchers claim. They add: “Our research shows that despite the high availability of unguarded herds of cattle and horses, wolves prey mainly on wild mammals. Managers searching to solve wolf-livestock conflicts should consider that wolf depredation is not a simple function of livestock availability but is also influenced by other factors, such as the species and breed of livestock, grazing methods, landscape, and availability of wild prey.”
But how do farmers in rural mountainous areas feel about coexisting with wolves?
While the Rural Resilience project has previously heard from farmers in France, Romania and Switzerland who endeavour to coexist with large predators, in recent conversations on the ground we noted a harsher stance.
Below, three farmers across the EU, practising traditional Alpine farming – regions where wolf populations are relatively high – and a variety of agroecological practices, weigh in:
Dairy and meat farmer Bruno Quazzola, in the Alpine village of Carcoforo, Italy, finds that the constant presence of the wolf significantly complicates his work, and stresses out his cattle, goats and sheep.“The region has made available tools (electric nets) to contain the flock for their protection. I think that at this point the only solution to ensure that it does not become an uncontrollable problem is to carry out targeted and selective culling, to immediately eliminate hybrid individuals and the less “wild” animals. Otherwise, those to be protected in the end will be us small mountain farmers who, despite the continuous difficulties, try to remain in the area to combat the abandonment and depopulation of small villages. That we talk a lot but in the end we are not helped adequately.”
For Johann Meissnitzer, a dairy and meat farmer practicing traditional transhumance practices with a medium sized farm in the Alpine state of Carinthia, Austria, the problem is more clear cut: “Wolves are seen as a huge problem in our area. If wolves were to settle in our area it would literally mean the end of Alpine farming as we know it today. Some farms have already considered not driving animals onto the Alpine pastures to minimise the risk of wolves attacking them. We’re in a special situation in Carinthia because wolves are currently being shot by hunters, and thanks to our hunters and representatives, the wolf is currently only a minor issue. The highly touted livestock guardian dogs are expensive, time-consuming, and hardly feasible in practice. It’s the same story with wolf protection fences: too expensive, too time-consuming, and doesn’t work. I’m of the opinion that coexistence in close quarters between wolves and agriculture doesn’t work; our ancestors didn’t exterminate the wolf without reason. I see the lowering of the protection status as a positive development.”
And in France, Marie Halicki, former shepherd and current cow farmer, also believes the problem cannot be solved with nets or regulations but is more philosophical: “The hardest thing about the wolf is the uncertainty. Even with nets and guard dogs, we know the attacks will continue. They might decrease, but there will always be a risk. Always. The workload is greater than it would be without the wolf (taking down and putting back up electric fences, training and feeding the dogs, increasing patrol rounds, etc.), but we’re never sure of the results we’ll get. The state and the EU fund the equipment and the dogs, but the peace of mind we had before, without the wolf — that can’t be bought. And clearly, that’s what has been the hardest thing for farmers to lose.”
More
https://www.arc2020.eu/france-keeping-the-wolf-from-the-door/
https://www.arc2020.eu/romania-a-modern-dichotomy-between-biodiversity-and-farming/
Letter From The Farm | The More-Than-Human Magic of Transhumance
https://www.arc2020.eu/romania-how-wild-is-too-wild/
Farm to Forms – the Epicness of Trying to Establish and Run a Farm in France
BTV’s Cost: A Farmer Caught Between the Virus and the System
Letter From The Farm | Seven Years In: Realising Our Agroecological Vision
From Protests & Polarisation to Weaving Common Ground – A Year of Rural Resilience
