Star Metro - France loosens rules on allowing farmers to shoot wolves

Once hunted to extinction in France, wolves began crossing over from Italy after gaining protected status under the 1979 Bern Convention.

But they have been killing more livestock, too, with 12,000 farm animals lost last year, according to preliminary figures.

Under current rules, farmers can only shoot wolves if they attack animals inside a protected enclosure -- a restriction centrist President Emmanuel Macron's government said would now be relaxed.

"Protected or not, farmers will have the right to shoot to protect" their herds, Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said on a visit to the northeastern department of Haute-Marne.

"With this kind of predation, the status quo... just isn't possible," added Environment Minister Mathieu Lefevre, whose office said the change would be made official "in the coming weeks" in an executive order.

Wolf protections are getting a downgrade across the European Union, after EU lawmakers last year approved reducing wolves' status from "strictly protected" to "protected".

The change -- condemned by environmentalists -- was spearheaded by the party of European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, who lost her beloved pony Dolly to a wolf attack in northern Germany in 2022.

The new French shift comes at a time when the country's farmers have been flexing their political muscle.

Throngs of farmers on tractors have blocked roads to protest the January signing of an EU-South American trade deal they say will let a flood of cheap, substandard products into Europe.

S.Cloutier--SMC