To Cull or Coexist? Hunting as a False Solution to Wolf-Livestock Conflict
Featured Image Caption: A Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus) in the Polar Park in Bardu, Norway. The species has witnessed a spectacular revival across Europe in recent years – a revival now threatened by the return of continent-wide culling. Image: “Eurasian wolf” by Mas3cf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Source Article: Kutal, M., Dula, M., Selivanova, A.R., López-Bao, J.V. (2023). Testing a conservation compromise: No evidence that public wolf hunting in Slovakia reduced livestock losses. Conservation Letters. 17:e12994. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12994
The recovery of the Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus) has been one of Europe’s most remarkable conservation success stories in recent years. By the mid-19th century, hunting and habitat loss had eradicated the wolf from most corners of the continent. Today, however, more than 20,000 wolves call Europe home, and the species is stable or increasing in nearly every country in mainland Europe. The wolf’s legal protection has been key to its success: the Bern Convention of 1979 classified the wolf under Appendix II, requiring strict protection and forbidding the intentional killing of the species. The decades since attest to the success of this conservation framework.
Wolves in the Crosshairs: Predators, Ponies, and Politics
This September, however, the EU proposed a downgrade of the wolf’s protected status from Appendix II to III, which would open the door to regulated hunting of the species across Europe. The proposal will be voted on at the next meeting of the Bern Convention in December. The reason for the change? Livestock: Europe’s wolves kill on the order of 40,000 sheep, goats, cattle, and semi-domestic reindeer per year. While this is a vanishingly small portion of the wolves’ diet, the effects are acutely felt by rural herding communities, particularly in hard-hit countries like France, Italy, Greece, and Croatia.
Politically, the push to downgrade was led by the European People’s Party, the continent’s centre-right coalition. Eager to garner the support of rural voters, the coalition’s leader Ursula van der Leyen may have also had a personal vendetta, as her pony was killed by a wolf in 2022. Support for wolf hunting is not limited to the right, however: after supporting the wolf’s status for years, the German Green Party switched their country to the pro-downgrade camp, citing the impact on livestock. This gave the pro-downgrade bloc a majority and allowed the EU to submit its proposal.
But does this cross-party support reflect solid scientific evidence? Will culling wolves in fact decrease the pressure on livestock, or is this so much political posturing? Is there another way to ensure wolf-livestock coexistence?
The Case of Slovakia: Hunting Fails to Reduce Livestock Attacks
A 2023 study looked at the impact of recent wolf culling on livestock predation in Slovakia. The country allowed limited wolf hunting between 2014 and 2019, framing the policy as a way to reduce predation on livestock. Hunts took place between November 1 and January 15. The authors of the study combined data on wolf culls with reported wolf attacks on livestock. They also collected and analysed 260 wolf scats to determine the overall diet of local wolves. Finally, they used multiple statistical techniques to analyse the impact of culling on livestock predation.
Hunters killed a total 246 wolves during the study period, out of an estimated national population of 600 individuals. Meanwhile wolves killed over 2,800 livestock – mainly sheep – over the same period. This amounted to .78% of the total sheep herd and a lower proportion of cattle and goat. Scat analyses showed wolf diet was dominated by wild ungulates, in particular roe deer, with sheep accounting for just .55% of the wolf’s diet.
Did the policy achieve its intended effect? Nationally there was no change in the number of livestock killed per year, and statistical analysis showed no correlation between the number of wolves killed and livestock predation at the local level. The policy seems, therefore, to have failed on its own terms. What the culling did achieve, besides decimating the country’s wolf population, was an increase in the wild ungulate population. With time, this could exacerbate other human-wildlife conflicts, as deer overpopulation can lead to agricultural damage and traffic accidents.
At first blush, these results seem counterintuitive: it suggests that a wolf that survived the cull was more likely to kill livestock than beforehand – this despite the fact that there was more available wild prey. The study did not offer an explanation for this behavioral change. A previous study on wolves in Montana, which came to similar conclusions, suggested that culling may disrupt the pack dynamics of this highly social species. The loss of older pack members, for example, may prevent the social learning of hunting techniques or prey location, decreasing a pack’s ability to kill wild prey and increasing its dependence on livestock. This is however speculative and more research would be required to explain this dynamic.
A Failed Policy Goes Continent-Wide
Though Slovakia ended its regulated wolf hunts in 2021, the EU is now poised to introduce this policy on a continental scale. This despite the contradictory evidence described here, as well as previous studies in Montana, Michigan, and Slovenia, which cast further doubt on the effectiveness of culling. Indeed, “there is no scientific evidence that culling effectively reduces depredation on farmed animals,” according to a joint statement issued by over 300 civil society organizations protesting the downgrade. There is also an ongoing petition protesting the decision.
Wolf-livestock conflicts are indeed real and deserve to be taken seriously. Many farms already employ a combination of electric fencing, guard dogs, and increased human presence to safeguard their herds. These non-lethal methods have received limited research attention, though the Michigan study mentioned above showed them to be more effective than culling at reducing livestock predation. These solutions can be expensive, however, and the costs of implementation often fall on the farmers themselves, with little to no support from national or EU authorities. No wonder, then, that many support culling as an easy, if false, solution to the problem.
A policy that prioritized wolf-livestock coexistence would insist on further research, funding, and comprehensive implementation of non-lethal methods, instead of hunts that could threaten the wolf’s fragile recovery. This is clearly not the policy that Europe’s political leadership has chosen. In a few weeks the parties to the Bern Convention will meet and vote on the proposed downgrade, and there is little reason to believe it will not be approved.
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