Ravenous wolves colonise France, terrorise shepherds

A bloody, stinking sheep’s carcass greets shepherd Yves Vignon as he walks to check on his flock on the foggy Alpine heights. It’s the 17th of his ewes to be savaged in a month.

The mountains over Grenoble were once an ideal grazing ground for his 900 sheep. But now, after long banishment, the wolves are back – bolder and hungrier than ever.

“We came to this spot on June 24. A week later we were attacked” by wolves, Mr Vignon, 62, said. It was the first of at least four attacks over the past month.

“Every morning when I get up, I wonder what I am going to find on the spot where the sheep have spent the night,” he says. “I’m not here to feed those wolves!” Wolves were eradicated in France in the 1930s, but made a comeback in the southern Alps in 1992, crossing from Italy. They have spread through eastern France, first to the Savoy and this year to the Vosges and Doubs regions.

The predators have also appeared in the Pyrenees and in the heart of France in the Massif Central mountain range, but the government says these far-flung wolves also originate from the Italian pack.

Regional authorities estimate the French wolf population at between 170 and 200 this year, up from 140 to 170 last year. The government says wolves killed 1,329 animals, mostly sheep, in France this year up to July 22.

“We are beginning to wonder if there is a type of wolf that has no fear... since humans are not doing anything to them,” says Pascal Grosjean, a French government wolf expert.

One such pack of fearless wolves swooped on a flock in broad daylight under the noses of two shepherds and five sheep dogs in the Alps in November 2010, Mr Grosjean said. EU law forbids Mr Vignon to reach for a rifle to solve his wolf problem, though as a last resort authorities can authorise the strategic shooting of a particularly deadly wolf, up to a limit of six per year.