Wolves in Europe

Recently the European Landowners’ Organization has been confronted with an increasing number of complaints on wolf conflicts in the majority of European countries where the wolf is present. Furthermore, outside ELO’s membership we hear an increasing demand from people working and living in Europe’s countryside to limit the population growth in certain regions, as social and economic conflicts are increasing with growing wolf populations. In a number of EU Member States those conflicts start to influence the political agenda, sometimes to a level where the European nature directives are questioned. Based on a limited selection of 177 research papers, we brought together relevant information on wolves in Europe with a view of their effective conservation and management. While the methodology guaranteed a bias-free selection of scientific publications, it raised a number of concerns described in the report. Based on the review and the documents of the EC’s EU Large Carnivore Platform combined with the feedback from its membership, ELO made a number of recommendations in order to tackle some of the concerns of Europe’s rural inhabitants towards the increasing growth of wolf population in Europe’s rural areas.