Wolf management in the Alps requires attention to science and people

By Francesco Bisi

The first wolves to enter the Alps in nearly a hundred years found themselves in southeast France’s Mercantour National Park in 1992. Like the area’s glacial lakes, Bronze Age rock carvings, and “perched villages,” the wolves were a relic of a time past. Once abundant and widespread, centuries of organized extermination had whittled down Eurasian wolf populations to nearly nothing, and had eliminated them entirely from the Alps by the early 1900s.

But wolves did not go extinct across Europe, and in the last 50 years, relict population have naturally spread back into parts of their old range. Their return has sparked conflict, and with it, the need to bridge social, administrative, and disciplinary boundaries. At least, that’s what partners of LIFE Wolf Alps EU —an interdisciplinary, multi-national project I supported as a researcher—think is the key to moving towards coexistence, rather than returning to a time of hatred and fear.

Wolves have been systematically trapped, hunted, poisoned, and bountied for over a millennium, from England and Scandinavia to the Balkans and Bavaria. In France, Charlemagne institutionalized the practice around the year 800 when he created the “louveterie,” an elite corps of hunters tasked with eradicating wolves. More than a thousand years later, France killed its last wolf in the 1930s.

But, as wolves became less of a threat to livestock and life in a rapidly industrializing world, and with the growing popularity of new environmental ideals, the fervor for extermination faded before the job was done. In 1979, when the Bern Convention made wolves a strictly protected species throughout Europe, about a hundred wolves remained fragmented in the Apennine Mountains—which run from toe to calf along Italy’s boot. A few more sheltered in the most remote parts of Slovenia’s Dinaric Alps, with diminished populations elsewhere in eastern Europe. These have been the most important source populations for the species’ natural recolonization of the Alps.

In addition to new protections, wolves benefitted from the decline of traditional rural economies and gradual depopulation of the mountains—particularly the most remote regions—as pastoralists and others sought better services and opportunities at lower elevations and in cities. This opened up habitat not only for wolves, but also deer, boar, and other prey species, making the Alps a lower conflict place with better food than they had been in centuries.

Over the course of two decades, the Italian Apennine wolves made their way towards the Alps, finally reaching France in 1992, the same year that the species saw further protection in the European Union (EU) under the Habitats Directive. From there, they have continued to expand through the crescent-shaped range, first reaching Switzerland in 1995, Italy in 1996, and Austria in 2008. In more recent years, wolves have also entered the Alps from southern Slovenia, the Karpathian mountains (Slovakia), and the central European lowlands (Germany, West Poland, Czech Republic). In each country, breeding pairs and resident packs lagged well behind the first wolf sighting, in some cases more than a decade.

The returning wolves face a world that has largely forgotten what it was like to live alongside them, but has not forgotten how to fear them. While those first Mercantour wolves found what National Geographic calls “the last terre sauvage in the Alps,” the range as a whole is not wild. The Alps still support 14 million people across 6,000 settlements, and a deep tradition of agriculture is bound up in both the culture and the landscape. Wandering shepherds and their cattle, sheep, and goats are iconic to the region, and their grazing maintains high alpine meadows and other distinctive ecosystems that support rich biodiversity and endemic species. Many see wolves as an existential threat to this precious and delicate system, raising questions about the feasibility of human-wolf coexistence.

The LIFE WolfAlps EU project believes that such a sprawling, complex issue needs to be addressed at the same scale—with a coordinated, population-level outlook rather than fragmented management limited by administrative and disciplinary boundaries. Spanning France, Italy, Austria, and Slovenia, the team has worked for the last decade on a two-part approach. First, establish a solid baseline understanding of the wolf population and its spread in order to develop unified, scientifically-grounded information and messaging. Second, work along nine different “axes of intervention,” to foster understanding and reduce conflict between wolves and people.

Agriculture has been part of the cultural, social, and economic fabric of the Alps for hundreds of years. Above, a shepherd protects his herd from the foreboding mountains beyond in an 1860 oil painting by Hjalmar Munsterhjelm.

Part one began in Italy and Slovenia in 2013 with a focus on “knowing before acting,” meaning years of data collection on the wolf population, human attitudes, livestock depredation, poaching, and more. Wolves typically occur at low densities in rugged terrain, making basic monitoring a challenge. A lack of consistent methodology adds to the difficulty, especially when trying to compare data between administrative authorities in multiple countries. The WolfAlps team addressed this issue by training 512 participants—including volunteer associations, professional researchers, and public authorities—to collect standardized data through snow tracking,
wolf howling, genetic analysis of biological samples, and camera trapping.

During this time, I was in charge of wolf monitoring in the Lombardy region in the central Italian Alps. Most of the activities took place during winter, and for the first time during a snow-tracking activity, I came across evidence of a deer killed by a wolf. This discovery made me realize that I was not alone in the wilderness. However, the most significant aspect was that, while I was out there looking for tracks in the snow, many other operators were conducting the same monitoring efforts across the Alps.

These shared and scientifically collected data were the first step for researchers and managers to speak a common language over such a broad landscape, which aided credibility and coordination. Sharing this information took many forms, from a Wolf Alpine Press Office to newsletters, social media, conferences, an interactive, traveling exhibition, a theatrical show, art contests, a children’s book, and more.

Overall, the first project laid the foundation for a broad network of stakeholders and partners working together on a shared and coordinated conservation program. Other early activities included assessing the threat of dog-wolf hybridization, supporting preventative measures, and implementing anti-poaching efforts.

Rucksacks full of scientific knowledge, listening to people became the next most important step for conservation. The second project, which began in 2019, expanded to include France and Austria and made improving human-wolf conflict its primary focus. Particular attention was given to understanding the needs of those most impacted by the wolves’ natural return and working with them to share knowledge and explore solutions for coexistence. In this project, I continued to coordinate the monitoring activities in the Lombardy region and participated in numerous meetings with shepherds, hunters, and environmental protection associations to discuss the wolves’ return to the Alps and what it meant for them.

In many areas where wolves never disappeared, shepherds have maintained practices that protect their herds from depredation, like using guard dogs and constantly accompanying free-ranging livestock. More modern inventions, like the use of electric fences, can also help protect cattle and sheep. (Nolan Gerdes)

Shepherds have perhaps the oldest and most persistent reason to resent wolf recolonization—livestock depredation. A 2023 report by the EU estimates that wolves kill at least 65,500 head of livestock each year, nearly three quarters of which are sheep and goats. The report also notes that wolf-killed sheep comprise just 0.065% of the EU’s total population of 60 million sheep, but at a local level, livestock loss can be unbearable.

Depredation rates are typically lower in areas where wolves never disappeared. For communities where wolves were absent for nearly a century, however, herders have largely lost the habit of coexistence with predators, including constantly accompanying free-ranging livestock and the use of guard dogs. Adapting their herding practices can mean increases in cost, work, and stress for farmers who are already struggling, and solutions like electric fences are not always feasible or sufficient. Capacity and expertise also vary widely between professional herders with large flocks and hobby farmers.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all solution, researching, supporting, and experimenting with best practices, particularly through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, can contribute to making Alpine pastoralism more sustainable, thereby preserving a unique cultural institution, rural livelihoods, and important habitat. Talking directly with people about these options, I noticed, tended to be more effective than simply giving them money to buy prevention tools or as reimbursement for livestock predation.

Hunters are another stakeholder group that have expressed concerns over wolf recolonization, seeing them as competition for game species. Rather than dismiss these concerns, WolfAlps designed a series of participatory studies that involved hunters throughout the process of investigating the wolves’ impact on wild prey, particularly red deer. Researchers found that the impact of wolves on game populations is minor compared to hunters themselves, but hunting management may need to be adjusted in some areas where wolves have returned.

The project has likewise taken seriously the rural Alpine residents who fear for their safety, discussing potential risks (like improper food management and uncontrolled domestic dogs) and holding an International Conference on Bold Wolves. In the last 40 years, there have been very few cases of wolves attacking humans in Europe. None of them were fatal, and they were mainly caused by habituated wolves. The 2023 EU report concludes that “the risk of people being attacked by wolves is incredibly low in the modern world.” However, I often heard people claiming the opposite, possibly influenced by media misinformation.

WolfAlps stakeholder meetings became a platform for rural communities to express their concerns about more than just wolves. In this sense, wolves became their microphone. (Courtesy Francesco Bisi)

By creating regional dialogue platforms where people could express their concerns and feel heard, WolfAlps has perhaps not fully changed minds, but at least opened a door to greater trust and understanding. In my experience, even the people who shouted at me during meetings would sometimes come up afterward and thank me, not because I solved their problem, but because I listened to them.

These conversations have also revealed an opportunity for the wolf to shed light on a much broader context. Local community meetings often ended with the idea that wolves are not themselves the whole problem, but rather the straw that broke the camel’s back; people use the time to talk about other challenges for farming and rural living. In this sense, the wolf becomes their microphone.

I also saw how in regions where wolves have been present for 30 years or more, both wolves and humans have been able to coexist, even though the conflict has not been entirely resolved. In these areas, the greatest challenge is not pushback from the public, but rather administrative fragmentation that complicates effective conservation and management.

These stakeholder engagement platforms are just one part of the project, which also includes Wolf Prevention Intervention units, a host of trainings, hybridization prevention, development of eco-tourism, an Alpine Young Ranger Program, anti-poisoning dog teams, and more—almost too much to keep track of. But “the complexity of this project is its strength,” says one final report, and I agree. As human beings, we are integral parts of ecosystems, and our interactions with nature—wolves, in this case—take many forms. Therefore, it is crucial to consider all these aspects comprehensively.

As of 2023, wolves have been detected in every EU country except the islands of Ireland, Cyprus, and Malta. The population was 20,000 and climbing. Given wolves’ legal protection and unassisted spread, the Alps will probably never be wolf-free again. Which means it will probably never be conflict-free, either. But hopefully, through a multi-pronged effort happening at the same time all over a huge region, the Alps will learn how to live with wolves in a way that protects the region’s ecological, social, cultural, and economic values. And it may even be that wolves can become a bridge that forces people to think beyond boundaries.

Francesco Bisi is a zoologist and research fellow at Insubria University in Italy. An expert in alpine vertebrate monitoring, his research focuses on wildlife conservation and human-wildlife interaction and he teaches a course on sustainable use of wildlife. During the LIFE WolfAlpine EU project, he has been responsible for wolf monitoring activities in the central Alps for the Lombardy Region and has been involved in stakeholder engagement through sharing information about species distribution and wolf population dynamics.

Header image: The first wolves to step foot in the Alps in nearly 100 years appeared in France’s Mercantour National Park in 1992. (JP Valery/Unsplash)

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