Wolves in France

WOLVES IN FRANCE (Summer 2013)

by Jim Beers

The following comments were made by a French biologist writing to a famed wildlife professor in W Canada recently:

 1.       As for diseases that you mention, one of my friends - a young breeder and student in biology - demanded that the authorities analyze the wolf scats around her property and publish the results ... 2 years ago and still no reply.

She lost 120 lambs because she had fed them on hay she had made from a field where there were many scats.

The lambs died from multiple infections, septicemia or were declared unfit for consumption and those who survived are sterile .. because of Echinococcus infestation.

The lambs died from multiple infections, septicemia or were declared unfit for consumption and those who survived are sterile .. because of Echinococcus infestation.

2.       As I write, the phone has rung. A friend has just had another attack. He lost more than 20 sheep a few weeks back.

3.       This evening, 1 livestock guard dog killed, 5 guard dogs seriously injured, another found cowering in a quiet place. 3 ewes unrecoverably wounded, 2 lambs killed, how many missing? - yet every day he fires his rifle, sometimes assisted by hunters, to try to keep the wolves at bay.

4.       Over 40% of wolf attacks now occur during the day, while the shepherds and their dogs are guarding their flocks.

5.       Several shepherds have had experiences with aggressive wolves that snarl and intimidate them when they have approached a carcass.

6.       A sub-Prefect participated in a wolf defense shooting (at one of my friend's farm) .. and was followed in the dark by wolves. She made a fuss to the top Prefect and the police came to make enquiries yesterday

7.       We have 3 psychological crisis cells for the shepherds.
Breeders are suicidal, couples are breaking apart.

8.       The guard dogs harass and attack not only wildlife (especially marmots) but also hikers and cyclists.

9.       Very recently, a woman badly bitten by 2 guard dogs was transported to hospital by helicopter.
http://www.ledauphine.com/savoie/2013/08/19/une-raodonneuse-mordue-par-deux-patous
 

10.   Fences and electric parks? Wolves jump over and pass underneath them or harass the sheep until they pile up and bring the parks down.   Also, as you stated, the wolves use them to corner wildlife and sheep

11.   Out of 24 wolves to be removed in the new National Wolf Plan... only one has been shot so far and one injured - they are impossible to kill. In spite of the shooting ... the wolves come back.

12.   We need a panel of independent trappers / experts to come and study our situation -
.. from Russia ? Canada? USA ? Would you possibly have any suggestions?
Carter Niemeyer from Yellowstone Park came this spring, invited by his pro-wolf friends. He said it's impossible to capture wolves in France ..

13.   I have very briefly painted the picture of the situation here.
We are totally dictated by the LCIE, the "Guidelines", Directive Habitats, the Bern convention ...

14.   NB Jean-Marc Moriceau "turned his coat". He now says that wolves never attack man ?!  He is going to organize a gigantic pro-wolf symposium in October with Boitani LCIE, a wolf park and a despicable local mayor ..  Please share this video ... almost 1500 views of the sub-titled version ..
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11itci_sheep-breeders-the-invisible-bites-msa_news

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The video linked above (Ctrl +Click) is highly recommended.  It describes, in a very understandable way the growing conflicts between French shepherds and the wolves that are invading (a valid biology word) France and expanding their range, numbers and densities just as here in the US under scurrilous government protection.

I would direct your attention on this Labor Day to the POLITICAL CORRECTNESS and implied fear (of whom government, radicals, neighbors without sheep, children propagandized in schools media, customers, who?), implicit in the final remarks on the video: “It’s not that we’re against wolves.  We just cannot work alongside them.”  Work?  As in “live” or “support our families” or support our communities”?  Work is more than self-worth or self-esteem, it is the means by which we live and support those we love and those we are responsible for.

I honestly do not know whether to be struck by such extreme Christian tolerance for a government-manufactured force destroying rural families, rural economies and a valuable French industry; or to marvel at such victim-patience with a human-created force that is destroying these family-men’s income, families, marriages, and mental well-being.  It is easy to say, “Oh those French” or “Oh those Europeans” but they are as much rural victims of gun control by a government they must serve rather than vice versa as are Asians and Russians and soon us (?) thereby making them totally helpless before wolves.  They are as much prey to unrealistic myths and imaginary dialogues with government and radical urban forces as are Lower 48 ranchers, herders, hunters, and assorted rural residents increasingly harmed by wolves. 

Wolves kill much of the available elk and decrease elk hunting; and many elk hunters and their organizations warble about not being “against wolves”.  Wolves reduce Minnesota moose to remnants no longer able to sustain moose hunting and Minnesota hunters shrug and support the state bureaucrats that denied it was happening for years.  Ranchers and sheepherders, after decades of lies and deceptions about “non-lethal controls” and “compensation, still swallow these lies as wolves invade their areas until it is too late to control the wolves in any effective manner.  Wolves grab campers by the head as they sleep and bite them through tents and lethal wolf control at the site is condemned and everyone bends over backwards to explain it away as “rare” and “unprecedented” while it is anything but that and can be expected to increase as any real controls are demeaned and avoided for political and bureaucratic benefits.  As for those experiencing harms, dangers and destruction from wolves that even they refuse to acknowledge candidly much less call for what they know must be done from now on – do NOT all live in the S of France.  They live in Lower 48 States’ rural areas as well as in European and American urban luxury condos and in rural gated estates of gazillionaires interested only in their own legacy and leaving their name on a remaking of the US into a distorted caricature of what was once the light of the world and a destination for freedom-seeking, legal immigrants from all over the world.

In more ways than Socialism and a loss of religious faith, France is becoming the US as the US is becoming France.