Dutch scientists this week announced that a
mysterious creature found dead at the roadside is almost certainly the
country’s first wolf in 150 years. Tony Paterson on the killer that’s
making a comeback across Europe
Rietschen, Germany
Friday 12 July 2013
For
sheep farmer Frank Neumann, the grisly spectacle was not merely
shocking: it was like a surreal re-enactment of a scene from Jack
London’s White Fang, the famous early 20th-century novel about
predatory Alaskan wolves during the Klondike gold rush. One overcast
April morning, the 63-year-old shepherd went out, as usual, to tend to
his flock, which he had carefully fenced in the night before in a field
in the remote east German village of Schleife. He was devastated by the
bloodbath that confronted him.
The mauled and blood-soaked corpses
of 27 of his carefully nurtured livestock were scattered across his
sheep enclosure. A few displayed gaping, bright-red flesh wounds, but
most of the dead animals had had their skins punctured by deadly
incisors, which had caused them to perish from massive subcutaneous
haemorrhaging.
The next night the predators struck again, killing
six more of Mr Neumann’s flock. “After this bloodbath, I was ready to
chuck in sheep farming for good,” he told The Independent. Mr Neumann
has been a shepherd all his life, but never expected to have his
livelihood threatened by wolves.
Germany’s “last wolf” was shot
dead in 1904. The few that strayed into German territory from eastern
Europe after the Second World War met a similar fate. Mr Neumann’s flock
was attacked in a remote corner of north-east Saxony in 2002. But now
the predator has returned with a vengeance, not only to vast tracts of
Germany but also to much of western Europe. Just last week an animal,
which biologists believe was almost certainly a wolf, was run over and
killed by a car near the Dutch hamlet of Luttelgeest, a mere 30 miles
from densely populated Holland’s North Sea coast. Naturalists say the
animal probably came from a German pack and was likely to have been
hunting for a suitable location to start a new one. Biologists are still
carrying out tests. If their claims are confirmed, the animal will be
first wolf found in the Netherlands since 1869.
The wolf’s return
to western Europe can attributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
After Germany’s subsequent reunification in 1990, the wolf became a
protected species across the entire country. It was a radical policy
switch which holds out the near-certain and for many still alarming
prospect of the wolf’s return to parts of the European Union which have
lived without the predator for well over a century. Luttelgeest’s wolf
is evidence enough. Holland’s natural heritage organisation,
Natuurmonument, says it may not be long before the animals are again
roaming the Dutch countryside.
“Most European countries have
signed the 1979 Berne convention which prohibits the killing of wolves,”
said Vanessa Ludwig, a biologist who monitors the growing wolf
population in Germany’s Lausitz region, close to the border with Poland .
In her office in the so-called “wolf village” of Rietschen, the walls
are covered with maps marked out with blue circles denoting the areas
where wolf packs have settled only recently. “In Europe, the wolf is at
the top of the predatory chain. It has no enemies except humans. We have
not reached the legal limit in wolf numbers which would allow for
culling, so the species is, by its nature, destined to spread across the
continent,” she explained.
Wolves started entering Lausitz from
Poland in the 1990s. The detritus of the Cold War has turned the area
into ideal wolf country. It is covered with military exercise areas once
used to train the occupying Soviet Army. Nowadays, they are used much
less frequently by German troops.
For most of the time they make
up a vast, uninhabited and largely road and path-less wilderness,
covered with half-grown pine and birch trees. The public is warned not
to enter. Europe has nine wolf population zones including Scandinavia,
the Baltic states. Poland, Romania, south-eastern France, Italy and the
Iberian peninsula. In Lausitz, a dramatic and significant shift in the
wolves’ behaviour was observed in 2000, forcing a rethink about the
animals’ future. A night-vision video camera filmed a pair with a cub as
they meandered across one of the deserted military areas. It proved
that wolves were not just visiting Germany, but had resettled the
country for the first time in more than a century. Today, there are an
estimated 40 wolves in the region and their numbers are growing.
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