At the end of January, 24 environmental and naturalist associations registered a petition in the Basque Government. They called for the inclusion of the wolf in the Basque Catalogue of Endangered Species in the category of Endangered Species. Such an initiative is the only case that has so far come with civil society actors; it is usually the administration itself that requires the inclusion of a species in the catalogue. But the Basque administrations do not have the will to adequately protect the wolf, according to the environmental advocates. At the moment, their demand has not been met.

In the petition to the Basque Government, conservation advocates stress that in the CAV there are no consolidated groups of wolves and that the few examples that enter the Basque Country from western communities suffer a high mortality rate due to human harassment.

It is believed that any other species found in the same situation would be in the Endangered Species Catalog. “The wolf, on the other hand, has been left out because it believes it is in a good situation in the Spanish State in general and therefore does not care what we do here,” explains Jorge Echegaray, a member of the Lobo Group of the Basque Country and a degree in Environmental Sciences. “It is curious that this argument has not been used in the case of other species included in the Catalogue, such as the mammal or the leonado vulture, although their situation in the Spanish State is better than that of the wolf”.

It is not easy to know exactly the number of wolves in a given area, as they tend to hide from human beings, so indirect methods should be used to calculate the size of their populations. In the explanatory report accompanying the request for the inclusion of the wolf in the CAPV Catalogue of Threatened Species, the 24 associations cited have cited shortcomings in the studies carried out in recent decades to find out the number of specimens in the Iberian Peninsula. In this way, a mere recognition that this amount is constantly growing would amount to a certain bias. And if so, the proponents of nature conservation believe that this argument does not justify the lack of protection of the wolf in the CAV.

Recovering lost areas

“The wolf has been, after the human being, the mammal that has spread the most throughout the world,” explains Jorge Echegaray, “but the persecution against him has been tremendous on all continents.” In the nineteenth century, the improvement of hunting methods caused a great decline of the species in America and Europe. As far as our continent is concerned, we can find it particularly in the areas of the east that are bordering on Russia. Most of the remaining populations are in mountainous areas of the Mediterranean area: Alps, Apenines, Balkans, Pyrenees, Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula…

Some of these areas have recently been reconquered by wolves. The scientific literature has found that, for various reasons, some of the habitats lost by large predators are recovering. “This is often attributed to the legal measures that have been taken,” says Echegaray, “but there are those who believe that this is the result of human beings leaving the countryside and rebuilding the forests.”

The wolf groups of the Iberian Peninsula are a special case in Echegaray, as “they have been isolated from other populations for centuries”. This isolation has caused them various damage, from the point of view of genetics, among others. Without getting caught up in the technical explanations on the subject, let us simply say that the Iberian wolves tend to extend to the east of the Cantabrian Mountains, that is to say to the Pyrenees, and that it would be good to make this connection from the point of view of biodiversity. However, wolves have been found with a fence in the west of the CAV. “This barrier is not ecological, but socio-cultural and socio-economic,” says Echegaray.

Extensive livestock farming wants to take the wolf away

The influence of wolves in the Basque Country only occurs in the counties of Bizkaia and Western Araba. Today, the most eastern area of which they arrive is the Gorbea area. Although the development and updating of the Catalogue of Endangered Species is the task of the Basque Government, the management of the species is the responsibility of the deputies. Both in Bizkaia and in Álava, one of the axes of the policy towards the wolf is the control measures of the populations, with the aim of protecting extensive livestock farming and especially grazing.

The position of the Administration is also in line with the demands of the primary sector unions, who believe that their management needs to be improved. Trade unions with environmental sensitivity also believe that limits should be placed on the wolf. “We do not want to promote the debate ‘the wolf not the wolf’,” said EHNE-Bizkaia member Alberto Llona, “we believe that we have to control populations, because the wolf damages extensive livestock farming that is an example for us.”

Of course, population control is about killing or scavenging wolves. The imputation to the wolves of all the damage suffered by livestock farming has led to persecution that has ended almost all the wolves that were in the Basque territories, according to Jorge Echegaray.

According to data provided by the member of the Lobo Group, in the period 1987-2005 there have been 63 deaths in the CAV, only half in the legal rounds. 40% of the illegal deaths have occurred in the Basque Country and most of the deaths have occurred in motor vehicles.

Trade union petition: Hego Euskal Herria, a territory without wolves

The EHNE-Bizkaia and other agricultural unions believe that the administrations of the areas where the wolves are located should improve coordination in the management of the species. In particular, it is requested that a management plan be drawn up for the whole of the Iberian Peninsula to ensure the conservation of the wolf in certain areas, thereby complying with European regulations, and to lay down measures to prevent the entry of wolf into others. One of the areas without a wolf should be the whole of Hego Euskal Herria, according to EHNE-Bizkaia. “Because today it is impossible to reconcile the presence of the wolf with extensive livestock,” can be read in a document summarizing the union’s position.

“As the wolf expands, the sector has become theirs,” says Alberto Llona, “especially in the case of sheep.” Extensive grazing is based on the use of pastures, and it is important that the latxa sheep breed most used in this model is the one that is perfectly adapted to the characteristics of the environment. Using the intensive model requires the use of other races, since latxa is not suitable for this purpose. It must not be said that the pressure to move from extensification to intensive is for many reasons, and that the wolf is only one of them, as Alberto Llona has acknowledged.

One argument put forward by those calling for protection of the wolf is that the number of sheep lost from attacks is not very high compared to the total. According to Jorge Echegaray, in the CAV there are about 360,000 sheep heads, 49 per square kilometre, most of them in Gipuzkoa, that is, in a single territory without a wolf. The Lobo Group relies on official statistics to highlight the low impact: In Álava, where data from Bizkaia are much more complicated, the attacks in the period 2000-2007 affected only 0.23% of the total sheep and 2% of the farms, taking into account dead, injured and lost.

Influence on pastors, especially qualitative

“It is true that, in general, the impact on livestock farming is not great,” Alberto Llona replied to this data, “but the quality of life of the shepherds around it is not acceptable, despite compensation; you cannot climb the mountain every day without knowing whether the sheep will be dead or not.” In some places, Llona says attacks are very frequent, not every day, but every week.

Therefore, in some counties of Álava and Bizkaia, many shepherds do not bring sheep as often as they did before. “The consequences are yet to be seen, we will see how the landscape, biodiversity, etc. change. Also from the point of view of livestock itself, it is detrimental to reduce the exploitation of the mountain to the people: the costs increase, the health of the sheep worsens…”.

The Management Plan for the wolf of Álava stresses that the need to protect itself from the attacks of the wolf has led to an average reduction of 33% in the time the herds spend on the mountain. According to the same source, the overnight storage of livestock makes the use of pasture less, and the time devoted to the care of herds is almost three times greater than when there is no risk of aggression. The tightening of conditions has brought fewer young people closer to the profession.

How is biodiversity better protected?

One argument in which trade unions and administrations in the primary sector are betting on preventing the wolf from accessing the Basque Country is that extensive livestock farming favours biodiversity. In fact, the disappearance of grazing animals would significantly alter this type of habitat.

Jorge Echegaray believes that it is very bad that we want to keep the wolf out of Euskal Herria in the name of biodiversity. Firstly, because it is wrong that the presence of the wolf in itself leads to the disappearance of livestock farming. Secondly, because it is not fair to say that many of the habitats that have been preserved well in the Basque Country have been preserved thanks to the activity of the primary sector. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that within the European Natura 2000 network, which aims to protect biodiversity, there is the wolf. “However, they say that local control measures do not affect the conservation of the species,” Echegaray regrets, “because in other parts of the peninsula the wolf is in good condition, no matter what we do here.”