A battle for the future of wolves is flaring up in Europe

A male wolf crept into a horse paddock in the municipality of Burgdorf-Beinhorn in Germany under a nearly full moon. He followed Dolly, a sweet chestnut pony with a white stripe on her nose. At the age of 30, Dolly was vulnerable. She was chosen as his next meal.

Wild beim Wild Editorial Team · 13 July 2025

A battle for the future of wolves is flaring up in Europe

Dolly belonged to Ursula von der Leyen, the German President of the European Commission.

After the pony Dolly was killed in Burgdorf-Beinhorn in 2022, local authorities used DNA samples from her carcass to identify the killer as a wolf designated GW950m. This animal had already been sought by others because it had been hunting livestock in the area. Its protected status was revoked, and it was placed on a kill list.

In autumn 2023, hobby hunters killed a large wolf that they believed was GW950m. But they soon learned they had been mistaken. Instead, they had killed his mate, the mother of his cubs.

Later that year, a court in Hanover banned the hunting of GW950m after the German group “Freunde wilder Wölfe” (Friends of Wild Wolves) filed a petition.

In May, Ralf Hentschel, an activist with the group, said that GW950m had found a new mate. They still live in Burgdorf-Beinhorn, together with their two cubs born last year.

Wolves lose “strictly protected” status in Europe

The European Union has spent millions to secure the return of wolf populations that had been persecuted for generations through Hunting and poison bait. As a result, wolves began to recover in Europe. But in May 2025, the European Parliament voted to downgrade the protected status of wolves. Environmental groups warn that this will «undo decades of progress» and could once again endanger this important species. In a press release, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) called the move an «unjustified crusade».

The driving force behind this change was Ursula von der Leyen and the European Commission she leads. Three days after Dolly's death, she said wolves had become «a real danger to livestock» in some parts of Europe, and «possibly also to humans». Her words angered conservationists, who pointed out that according to the European Commission's 2023 report, there has not been a single fatal wolf attack on a human in Europe in over 40 years.

Von der Leyen called for a thorough analysis of wolf attacks on livestock – and then pushed to lift the protected status that wolves have held since 1979 under the Bern Convention.

Von der Leyen belongs to the conservative European People's Party, which has sought to win the support of farmers. But her zeal surprised EU diplomats in Brussels, who told Politico that she was personally involved in technical discussions normally left to scientific experts. They called her approach “bizarre”. Environmental groups have accused the European Commission of using wolves as a “bargaining chip” to win the support of livestock farmers and thereby gain “political advantage”. They have claimed that von der Leyen is “purely personally motivated”.

“There is no scientific justification for weakening wolf protection,” said Gaia Angelini, President of Green Impact, a non-profit environmental organisation based in Brussels and Rome. “Wolves are still threatened with extinction in some parts of Europe.”

Wolfsschutz: Klage beim EuGH gegen Herabstufung

A heated battle over the future of wolves

Wolves and other apex predators play an important role in natural ecosystems. Amid a global crisis leading to widespread biodiversity collapse, conservationists believe wolves help keep the species they hunt healthy by preying on weak or sick animals and reducing the spread of diseases such as Lyme disease. They keep populations of roe deer, wild boar and other ungulates in check and on the move, giving plants and shrubs that might otherwise be eaten a chance to grow. Their presence is celebrated by conservationists as a sign of hope for nature's recovery.

However, their return has also angered and frightened livestock farmers and other people in rural communities who must learn to live with these once nearly extinct creatures. Farmers who used to let their sheep roam freely must now invest in electric fences or trained livestock guardian dogs to protect their herds – or risk losing part of their Animals to wolves in some areas.

The number of livestock killed remains vanishingly small. According to an EU report, wolves kill around 0.065% of the approximately 70 million sheep and goats in the EU each year, mostly sheep. A recent peer-reviewed study from Poland, in which scientists analysed wolf scat over two years, found that where there is enough wildlife for wolves to prey on, wolves rarely attack, even in areas where cattle and horses roam unprotected.

The EU is providing funding for the construction of protective measures for livestock and can compensate for livestock losses, although some farmers say the process is not always straightforward.

For smaller farms, however, wolf attacks can still have serious consequences. And anger over the return of wolves runs deep. In Germany, a severed wolf's head was placed in front of a local nature conservation authority. In Switzerland, farmers placed the carcasses of sheep killed by wolves in front of a regional government building. In Italy, six black rubbish bags containing nine dead wolves were found on a mountain pass covered in wildflowers. Among them were a pregnant female and seven young animals – an entire pack. They had been poisoned.

Adapting to life with wolves

As far-right parties have gained ground in both national governments and the European Parliament in Brussels, the EU's efforts to restore nature are being rolled back. The vote to reduce the wolf's protected areas was pushed through as an «emergency procedure», normally reserved for emergencies. This meant that the bill could bypass some of the usual protocols that would allow for closer scrutiny.

Green Impact and four other environmental and animal welfare groups are challenging the decision to downgrade the wolf's protected status before the European Court of Justice. Over 700 scientists and academics, as well as the International Union for Conservation of Nature, have signed letters opposing the change in protected status, arguing that the EU's decision has no scientific basis.

The European Ombudsman has now launched an investigation to determine whether von der Leyen's European Commission followed the correct protocols when pushing for this change, which conservationists believe will have far-reaching consequences for Europe's wolf populations and for the EU's reputation as a pioneer in biodiversity protection.

Italy has worked to dispel fears of wolves

Wolves have captured people's imagination since time immemorial. And since the Middle Ages, wolves have been hunted and killed by humans. According to the International Wolf Center, an estimated 100,000 wolves were killed annually for their fur in the United States between 1870 and 1877. In Europe, they were almost wiped out.

«It was not only legal but even mandatory to kill wolves by laying out poisoned bait,» says Piero Genovesi, head of the National Wildlife Service at the Italian environmental agency ISPRA.

In the 1970s, as scientists came to better understand the important role of apex predators in nature, conservationists launched a campaign to polish the wolf's image. In Italy, a deeply Roman Catholic country, they invoked the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, who befriended wolves, to change locals' view of the animal.

By 2022, ISPRA estimated the number of wolves in Italy at over 3,300, the largest population in Europe.

Wolf tourism has helped revive economically disadvantaged rural areas

Their comeback could help revive economically disadvantaged regions such as Italy's Abruzzo. The beautiful medieval borghi – hilltop towns – in this region are emptying out as Italians move to cities for work and Italy grapples with a low birth rate. Nature tourism, where visitors can observe wolves and bears, is bringing new life to this economy.

Although wolves will continue to enjoy a certain level of protection under the new law, experts believe that the relaxation of the rules will, in practice, lead vigilantes to kill even more animals than the law permits – a fact that, according to Genovesi of ISPRA, would be «truly dangerous» for the protection of wolves in European countries.

Instead, Genovesi says, the EU could focus on better training and equipping farmers so they can protect their livestock. In the rural areas of Abruzzo, where wolf populations have always existed, the presence of wolves is largely accepted, even by many farmers. Knowledge of how to live alongside them has been passed down through generations. Sheep are never left alone, protected by shaggy white Abruzzese dogs or watched over by shepherds.

“The wolf is a wild animal like any other here,” says Luca De Rosa, a local farmer, as he throws fennel from his truck into a field for his cows. «One day he's on my side of the mountain, the next he's moved on. Why should we shoot them?»

Further articles

More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.

The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.

Wild beim Wild editorial team

All articles are written by IG Wild beim Wild as well as by external co-authors. Research, structuring and editorial processes may be supported by AI-assisted tools.