Diarmuid Breatnach

(Reading time main text: 4 mins.)

The imagination’s land of the Red Cross, cheese, cuckoo clocks and chocolates plans the massacre of 70% of its wolf packs.¹

In reality of course Switzerland is a very regulated country, with a rich financial/ industrial economy and is a major arms producer.

However in 2020 Swiss voters made their desire to protect endangered species clear, when 52% of voters rejected a hunting law that would have made it easier to kill endangered species such as wolves.²

Despite the vote, the Swiss parliament passed a new law in December 2022 that allows the wolf population to be ‘regulated’. Then, just days ago, the government proposed a regulation that will wipe out 19 of the 31 wolf packs remaining in Switzerland!

WOLF MYTH & REALITY

Childhood and adult fiction is replete with horror stories about wolves (to say nothing of werewolves) attacking humans but, when set against reality, these seem like propaganda. The reality is that it’s not to humans that wolves are generally a danger but to their livestock.

Wolves (Canis lupus) are highly intelligent pack canines and, apart from having donated the dog (Canis lupus famialaris) as a worker and companion for humans, is well aware of its survival boundaries with Earth’s very apex predator – humans (Homo sapiens).

Wolves prey substantially on rodents but must also, for pack survival, prey on larger mammals such as deer, mountain goats and boar. When these are in poor supply or other prey is temptingly easy, such as cattle and sheep, they will take those too.

The traditional human fear of wolves is therefore not one based on self-preservation but on economic priorities. And in the moralistic story of “The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’” it is not the human villagers that are attacked by the wolf pack but the community’s sheep.

However, if humans are to continue consuming a diet that will include meat, they will of course need to protect their livestock from wolves and have being doing so even before history was written.

Traditionally the main agent in that protection has been, ironically perhaps, the wolves’ own descendant, the dog – or more specifically, several livestock guardian breeds of dog.

Known livestock guardian dog (LDG) breeds include the Aidi (Atlas Mountain Dog), Carpathian Shepherd, Estrela, Greek Shepherd, Komondor, several breeds of Mastiff and Sardinian Shepherd; a known extinct breed is the Alpine Mastiff (before 5th century BC to 19th century AD).³

Livestock guardian dogs are socialised to the livestock and to their immediate human ‘family’ and will not tolerate the close approach of any potential predator (which often includes even other humans). The primary role is to protect the herd, warn of danger and if necessary, attack.

Where employed in the past, LGDs have been highly effective in protecting their charges, in most cases not even having to fight predators but rather intimidating them. If they have to fight, they are bred for fearlessness and tenacity and their throats also protected by a “wolf-collar”.

Predators, however courageous, also have strong survival instincts which warn against danger to life or limb (the latter, for a predator in the wild, often in time equalling the first). Unless absolutely desperate they will move on to safer although more difficult-to-catch prey.

For a good LGD however, there is no backing down possible, it is in defence of its own (as a wolf pack might defend its pups). The herder, when present with a firearm, is mainly an additional protection, as well as an alpha member of the dog’s ‘pack’ to obey and protect.

In contemporary times, LGDs have proved effective throughout the world, even in the experimental reintroduction of wolves to the USA.⁴ So why are they not being more widely employed and, instead, the remaining large predators being exterminated?

It is no doubt more profitable for big livestock famers to have huge herds roaming freely and when they run out of edible pasture, to move the herd by herding dogs, mechanised herding vehicles or even helicopters. But is it all-around better? And are huge herds environmentally viable?

Apart from other considerations, wolves have been shown to have an environmentally positive effect in a balance between predator, prey and the environment, including vegetation and even water courses, for example in the famous case of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone.⁵

Deer are pretty to look at but eat young trees and cause damage to reachable branches, while wild goats will eat almost anything, right down to the roots. Wild boar can also be very destructive and, being omnivorous like humans, even prey on ground-nesting birds.

All of those invade agricultural crop lands to eat, in the course of which they also trample other crops; wild boar⁶ are now invading villages and suburbs in a number of towns and cities, overturning large refuse containers for their edible contents.

Wolves and other predators keep those species down to numbers in better balance with the environment but also of less bother to human settlements. Wolf packs on the other hand do not grow in size beyond the food supply that is fairly safely available.

The human race has made a huge impact on the environment which is sustainable up to a point beyond which, however, we are rapidly passing. We live in a sustainable balance with the environment — or we perish. Perhaps “let the wolf live” can be part of the lesson we need.

End.

FOOTNOTES

1https://theswisstimes.ch/rssfeed/criticism-of-planned-wolf-culling-by-environmental-groups-in-graubunden/

2Including the European Brown Bear, European Lynx and Eagles.

3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog

4“After the reintroduction of wolves, that were eliminated in the United States in the 1930s, American farmers were losing about a million sheep annually to wolf attacks. 76 farmers took part in the Coppingers program, which introduced European livestock guardian dogs into the US sheep breeding (in their project they used Anatolian Shepherd Dogs). In all farms, where, in the absence of dogs, up to two hundred attacks of wolves per year happened, not a single sheep was lost under the protection of LGDs. At the same time, none of the predators protected by law got killed: the dogs simply did not allow them to approach the herd.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog

5https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/

6A wild boar is much more likely to attack a human than is a wolf in Ireland, where the Wolfehound breed was famous, it was a boar that mortally gored Diarmuid of the legendary Fianna after his return from exile. Wild boar also carry diseases that can infect domestic pigs and humans.

SOURCES

Planned Swiss wolf massacre: https://theswisstimes.ch/rssfeed/criticism-of-planned-wolf-culling-by-environmental-groups-in-graubunden/
https://euro.dayfr.com/local/792716.html

Switzerland as arms exporter: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/switzerland-contributes-to-global-arms-trade-boom/46565762
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/culture/arms-trade–swiss-neutrality-as-business-strategy/48457830
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-07/swiss-arms-exports-jump-29-as-industry-laments-neutrality#xj4y7vzkg

Livestock guardian dogs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livestock_guardian_dog

Boars as a problem in urban areas: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/wild-boars-are-wreaking-havoc-in-europe-spurring-creative-solutions
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/hong-kong-urban-dwelling-wild-boars

The Yellowstone Park wolf introduction experiment: https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-reintroduction-changes-ecosystem/