PARIS: France’s wild wolf population rose again last year, with officials counting 580 adults at winter’s end compared with an average of 530 a year ago, France’s OFB biodiversity agency said Tuesday.

The government has been allowing grey wolves to multiply despite fierce resistance from livestock owners, who say they are suffering from increased attacks on their flocks.

But this winter’s increase was slower than the 23 per cent jump seen the previous year, and “survival rates declined,” the OFB said, adding that the causes remained unknown. Wolves were hunted to extinction in France by the 1930s, but gradually started reappearing in the 1990s as populations spread across the Alps from Italy.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2020