The wolf is expanding its territory in France, particularly in Occitania, a southern region conducive to its settlement due to its wildlife richness and where births have even been recorded in 2022.
“The wolf can arrive in all areas of the country overnight. It can adapt anywhere, ”explains Julien Steinmetz, coordinator in Occitania for the surveillance of dogs at the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), who tracks this carnivore.
That day he was snowshoeing through a snowy forest on the Aubrac plateau in the Aveyron department (south-west).
“Here is the paradise for the wolf. There is a lot of game that will probably interest him,” adds his colleague Jean-Christophe Peers.
On this winter morning, the two find new tracks in the snow from a specimen that has been spotted in the area for several years. Eleven other teams, totaling around forty people, cross this part of Aubrac on the same day.
Among them, volunteers from the wolf-lynx network, which has 4,500 members in France and monitors the wolf, which returned to France on its own in 1992, crossing the Alps from Italy.
Traces of paws could then make it possible to find excrement, urine or hair and thus genetically identify the person(s) present.
A “Fabulous Creature”
The white coat is covered with many prints. With a simple glance, the two OFB agents repel animals very different from wolves: deer, squirrels, rabbits, martens, forest cats, etc.
They rely more heavily on those of other canids. “The dogs in particular can make us doubt,” explains Mr. Steinmetz.
No wolf tracks are discovered on this day. A disappointment for some network volunteers, such as Gérard Alric, a 77-year-old former teacher and “green at heart”, who took part in this search for the “mythical animal”.
Even the “camera traps” that automatically take pictures of the animals do nothing.
After dismantling three of the fifteen cameras that the OFB had attached to tree trunks in Aubrac, Jean-Christophe Peers viewed hundreds of photos on his computer: no wolves, but deer, foxes, polecats. .
For the OFB, this lack of footprints does not mean that there are no more wolves in this sector. A sedentary person can actually move over an area of at least 200 km2.
In general, the wolf – of which about 15 have been identified in France out of a total of a thousand specimens – tends to expand its territory in this southern region.
The OFB has confirmed its presence in several departments and even births in 2022, a first.
“One of the most important biological characteristics of the wolf is its ability to disperse to colonize new territories very distant from its birthplace. Occitania is interesting for him because it is close to the Alps and has varied areas with lots of game,” Julien Steinmetz once again states.
First births
The OFB has registered cub births in 2022 in two of the region’s nine sectors with “permanent presence”. The other seven zones are further from the Alps.
Once present throughout the French countryside, the wolf occupied only half of its historical territory in the 19th century. Humans hunted it and reduced its habitat through massive deforestation until it disappeared in 1937.
Currently, its population is growing in France and is approaching a thousand individuals: 921 wolves were counted in June 2022, compared to 783 a year earlier.
But like the bear, the presence of the wolf regularly pits its defenders against the shepherds, who denounce the attacks on their flocks of sheep and goats.