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Ursula von der Leyen has backed a proposal to reintroduce the hunting of wolves by downgrading their protected status, prompting accusations from campaigners that the European Commission chief is sacrificing the animal for political gain.
The fate of Europe’s wolves has become a totem in a broader push by the conservative right, of which von der Leyen is a member, to win back the support of farmers who have turned to more radical movements in recent elections within the EU. The animal is also symbolic in debates about the pursuit of environmental objectives by city-dwelling policymakers at the expense of rural interests.
Von der Leyen, who is expected to announce her intention to run again as commission president after EU-wide elections in June, is under pressure from her European People’s party to show a more friendly face to farmers who argue that they are being penalised by Brussels’ environmental laws.
She has also been personally affected by the species: her 30-year-old pony was killed last year by a German wolf known by authorities in Lower Saxony as GW950m.
Wolves have been considered a “strictly protected” species under the Bern Convention, signed by 50 countries, since 1979. At the time their populations were deemed to be in decline, but there has been increasing pressure from the agricultural lobby in recent years to permit them to be culled.
Brussels’ proposal on Wednesday, if approved by two-thirds of the Bern Convention’s signatories, would mean that the wolf’s conservation status would be downgraded from “strictly protected” to “protected” and allow the species to be hunted.
“The concentration of wolf packs in some European regions has become a real danger especially for livestock,” von der Leyen said in a statement. “I am deeply convinced that we can and will find targeted solutions to protect both biodiversity and our rural livelihoods.”
But environmentalists said that there was no evidence for the move. “This is an outrageous announcement that has no scientific justification but is motivated purely by personal reasons and undermines not just the protection status of the wolf, but with it all nature conservation efforts in the EU,” said Sabien Leemans, senior biodiversity policy officer at WWF Europe.
Bas Eickhout, a Dutch lawmaker from the Greens, said the wolf had become a “political token” and part of the continued “attack by conservatives” on the nature agenda. “Everyone is always talking about [von der Leyen’s] horse — that didn’t help of course — but there’s political pressure from the parliament,” he said.
The EU voted against a Swiss effort in 2022 to have the wolf’s Bern Convention status downgraded.
Wolves kill more than 65,500 head of livestock in the EU annually, mostly sheep and goats, according to a commission assessment. Spain, France and Italy reported the most wolf attacks.
Some member states have exemptions to environmental protection rules to allow them to keep wolf populations under control. The commission report said that “deliberate and accidental killing by humans” was the main cause of wolf deaths.
It also said that “in some of the German federal states with the highest number of wolves, the frequency of wolf attacks on livestock has decreased significantly in recent years, which was associated to the use of adequate preventive measures”, No fatal attacks on humans have been reported in the last 40 years.
Tom Vandenkendelaere, a Flemish lawmaker from the EPP group, said von der Leyen’s announcement was “emblematic” of the German politician’s desire to distance herself from a previously “more ideological approach” from Brussels towards the environment and agriculture. “EPP has always defended working with farmers and not against them,” he said.
The announcement comes in the wake of a series of decisions by the commission to delay or water down legislative proposals that would impact rural communities, such as a bill to improve the sustainability of food systems and animal welfare rules.
Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general of Copa Cogeca, which represents European farmers, described the commission’s wolf proposal as a “Christmas present come early” and a sign that von der Leyen was now recognising agricultural concerns.
Pesonen said he had never personally come across a wolf but that they were causing havoc with populations of white-tailed deer in his native Finland. “It’s like McDonald’s” for wolves, he said, “especially in winter.”
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