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WOLVES

Wolf attacks: French farmers kidnap park boss

Around 50 angry French farmers have kidnapped the chief of a national park in the Alps, demanding he take action against repeated wolf attacks on their livestock.

Wolf attacks: French farmers kidnap park boss
Repeated wolf attacks on sheep have left French farmers frustrated. Photo: AFP

Farmers in France have grown exasperated in recent years after seeing their sheep repeatedly slaughtered by the rising wolf population in certain parts of the country.

While the government has authorised for wolves to be killed in certain areas where attacks have taken place, farmers have grown frustrated that not enough is being done.

On Tuesday evening a group of around 50 farmers took the extreme step of kidnapping the president of the National Park of Vanoise in the French Alps along with the park’s director.

They made the move to hold Guy Chaumereuil and Emmanuel Michau hostage against their will following a pubic meeting on the park's new charter.

The radical move of kidnapping has proved popular in France over the years, especially in Labour disputes between unions and bosses.

The farmers want urgent measures put in place to prevent the wolf attacks against their livestock.

According to farmers there have been 130 deadly attacks against livestock this summer compared to 105 last year.

A statement from the leading farmer’s union FDSEA in the Savoy region said: “Farmers are demanding the authorisation to kill wolves in the heart of the park and to establish effective means to round-up five wolves by the end of the year.”

“The farmers have reached their limit, they can’t take anymore. Every night they are in permanent stress,” said Jean Claude Croze, from the local branch of FDSEA.

The kidnapping, which did not involve any violence,  took place around 11pm and talks were still ongoing on Wednesday morning.

According to reports in the French press, the police have not suggested they will intervene. 

The map below shows where wolf attacks have taken place in recent years.

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ANIMALS

France’s wolf population rises once again

France's wild wolf population rose again last year, with officials counting 580 adults at winter's end compared with an average of 530 a year ago, France's OFB biodiversity agency said Tuesday.

France's wolf population rises once again
A woman holds an image of a wolf as people take part in a demonstration of several wildlife conservation associations, to protest against the hunting of wolves. AFP

The government has been allowing grey wolves to multiply despite fierce resistance from livestock owners, who say they are suffering from increased attacks on their flocks.

But this winter's increase was slower than the 23 percent jump seen the previous year, and “survival rates declined,” the OFB said, adding that the causes remained unknown.

Wolves were hunted to extinction in France by the 1930s, but gradually started reappearing in the 1990s as populations spread across the Alps from Italy.

Their numbers have grown rapidly in recent years, prompting authorities to allow annual culls to keep their numbers in check, though the predator remains a protected species.

READ ALSO: Where in France will you find wolves?

Under a “Wolf Plan” adopted in 2018, the “viability threshold” of 500 animals, the level at which the population is likely to avoid becoming at risk of extinction over a 100-year period, was not expected to be reached until 2023.

Wolves are increasingly spotted across French territory, from the Pyrenees mountains as far north as the Atlantic coastal regions near Dieppe.

But “there are still no packs formed outside the Alps and Jura,” the heavily forested region near the Swiss border, the agency said.

The numbers are far below those found in Italy, Romania or Poland, but they have nonetheless infuriated French farmers who say the wolves are decimating their flocks.

Last year, authorities registered 3,741 wolf attacks that led to the deaths of nearly 12,500 animals, mainly sheep.

The government offers compensation for the losses and has set up a range of measures to protect flocks, including patrols by “wolf brigades” in areas where traditional anti-wolf measures, such as dogs, fenced-off areas and 
additional shepherding, have failed.

That has not been enough to assuage the powerful FNSEA agriculture lobby and other groups, which say they have to wait too long for compensation payments in the face of repeated attacks on their livelihood.

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