In the previous weeks a wolf/several wolves were seen in the Netherlands and one was observed in Belgium… People were amazed. Pages and pages of newspapers and magazines are now stuffed with wolf tales.
The image of large carnivores in modern Europe often appears incongruous to many people.
Fifty years ago the situation for our large carnivores looked bleak. As a result of human persecution and transformation of the European landscape, populations had declined to the extent that they were absent from vast parts of the continent. Only some small relicts remained, in the mountains and around the edges of Europe. The specter of regional extinction was hanging in the air!
But large carnivores have shown they can live beside us in our modified cultural landscapes and nowadays the situation is transformed beyond recognition. Wolves have recolonized Scandinavia, Germany and the Alps. Relict populations in Iberia, Italy, the Balkans and the Baltics are expanding. Eurasian lynx populations are starting to reoccupy most of their former distributions in Scandinavia, the Baltic and the Carpathians, and reintroductions have returned them to many parts of the Alps and central Europe. Bear populations in Scandinavia, the Balkan and the Carpathians are reaching higher sizes. Wolverines have returned to southern Scandinavia, and even recolonized low-lying forest areas.
There probably have not been more large carnivores in Europe for more than a century.
Can we rise to the challenges of having wild neighbors?
Then we will have to accept that livestock may be lost, keeping in mind that the economic value of this lost livestock is insignificant compared to the financial value of these carnivores.
Also, hunters –being self-proclaimed nature lovers- must accept that the top carnivore has a right of living where it has lived for thousands of years. An important message here is that big carnivores also kill smaller carnivores (eg. foxes, martens etc.) and not only herbivores, which drastically reduces the presumed effects on herbivore populations.
Finally we have to think big: large carnivores need lots of space and linking the many Natura 2000 sites across Europe could supply an important refuge and core habitat.
Here my wolf images from earlier this year.
Boche jeanmarie
Hello Karl ,
de vraies belles photos et surtout de superbes documents ….que j’envie !!
A bientot
Jean -Marie
Jan Kelchtermans
Add 1: After years of conservation,numbers regarding large carnivores increased in Scandinavia for sure. But our ‘nature lovers’ up North can set this revival situation back to a blank.
This is what a friend ( a real nature lover) mailed me:
Lodjur (Swedish for lynx) are decreasing in Sweden. There were an estimated 2000 a couple of years ago. Today there are only about 1250 individuals around. Controlled hunting (“licens jakt”) has been used in Sweden since 1996. The quota for 2010 was 209 lodjur while the number permitted to shoot 2011 is lower, 110. This is due to the decrease of the species. There are of course a lot of arguing to try to prohibit all shooting of lynx completely to make the species recover up to 300 reproductions (300 family groups) wich is not a level rerached today.
Varg (Swedish for wolf) There are approx. 250 wolves in Scandinavia today. 220 in Sweden and 30 in Norway. The gov. stated earlier that there should not be more than 210 wolves in Sweden and permitted licens hunting last winter. The national quota was 27 wolves. After interveining from EU the swedish gov was forced to skip the upper limit of 210 animals (too small for sistainable population) and was also forced to stop the license hunting 2011. Still it is permitted to kill “problem wolves” with habits of taking domestic animals for instance.
That was some figures very shortly from Per (with domestic sheep but no problems with predators except hunting dogs).