EU Votes to Relax Wolf Protection Laws Amid Rising Livestock Attacks

They say you can feel when a wolf is watching you. "Do you think it's around us somewhere now?" "Maybe." "It is spooky." This state in Northern Germany is actually packed with wolves. There's even one wolf around here that is particularly infamous: Serial number GW950m. He's killed more than 70 livestock. But he really got in trouble when he killed a pony of equine-lover Ursula Von der Leyen, The president of the European Commission. So he got a kill order.

Shots were fired, killing other wolves - none of them GW950m. After three years, he still lives somewhere in these forests, reportedly with his new partner and their two pups. A lot of people though want him and other wolves gone from Germany. "Is it possible to keep the wolves out? I mean, it's also." "By killing them, yes." "I'll admit it - I love animals and I came out here just to see a wolf. But as I looked more into it, I got deeper into a story about people and politics." And learned about the fascinating lives of wolves.

"So here are two things I learned - and I will show how I got here: Hunting wolves is possibly the worst way of dealing with the problem. And it is possible to live with these predators in Europe. Even as kind of house mates?" That's what Siegfried 'Kenny' Kenner does in the German state of Lower Saxony. I paid him a visit at the hotel he runs - whose property overlaps with the territory of a wolf pack of seven. "What is your life like, living so close to a wolf?" "I find it very exciting and very beautiful. I could never have imagined that there would be wolves in Germany again.

I was totally surprised when that happened. It was similar to the fall of the Wall for me. I grew up here on the border [between East and West Germany]." "Yes." "For 40 years I only knew this fence, the separation, and suddenly it opened up. I had a similar feeling when the wolves came back." Wolves were hunted out of Germany in the mid-19th century. But a few decades ago, incidentally, after the wall fell and Germany re-unified, wolves came creeping back in. As East German factories were abandoned, the land opened up.

The perfect habitat for carnivores, who were tempted in from Poland. People welcomed and policies protected the returning wolves. Currently, there are around 1600 gray wolves in Germany, mostly in the North, slowly migrating downwards. They are smart animals, almost always avoiding humans, even though they live in landscapes dominated by humans. The male wolf right around Kenny's property though didn't come from the east but actually all the way from the Alps, 1200 km away.

He lives with his partner with whom he had four pups this year. "I often see the female." "Okay." "But the male not so often. He's very shy." "Oh, there's a scat." "There's a Wolf scat." "You can see a lot of hair. And bones. And it smells like wolf scat." Kenny is part of a group of volunteers that monitors wolf movement for the government.

Apart from sniffing around for their excrement, he also has 35 camera traps set up in this forest. One of them caught some very dangerous wildlife approaching. This, he says, is part of keeping track of all the action in the forest and how it is changing as the presence of wolf affects and benefits the ecosystem. "Wild boar." "Wowww." "A big group." "So many!" "Yeah." "It's a young one. Young red deer." "Oh.Red deer. Lovely." "When wolves kill other animals, they provide food for many other animals. And I know from photo traps that at least over 40 species

feed on the wolf's kill. So it's a cycle. And wolves are simply a part of it. That was missing before. Now the wolves are coming back. They take their place again. And serve the ecosystem." A healthy ecosystem is essential for our survival too. From clean air and to support pollinators that help grow food. The return of the gray wolf in such huge numbers around western Europe is seen as a great environmental success. But now things have changed.

"This is the part where the wolf bit him." "And the wolf did that?" "Yeah." "There's a hole here left by the wolf's tooth. It's infected." Two months ago, one sheep died and 16 were injured in an attack on this farm. And this is happening more and more. "How do you feel about this?" "Bad. Very bad at the moment. Because somehow you can't give the animals any more security.

I once said that the animals are actually my animals, they trust me. But they can't do that at the moment. There is no certainty for the future somehow. And I already have the feeling, because we've already had these attacks twice this year, that it's increasing rapidly at the moment." We were also joined by the vice president of the state's farmers union. 'It's not just the money, it's the work. It's what you see and what you think about if you see your dead animals. You let them grow up, you see how they were born. And then you see how they were killed."

Germany's and Europe's farmers' unions were successful in making their displeasure known. The EU law changed this year to downgrade the wolf's protection status. It is still protected but member states can manage their wolves with more flexibility, including the use of hunting via licenses. "Would you personally shoot a wolf?" "I'm not a hunter, I'm not allowed to do this, but if you don't tell, I will do." "And you won't feel sorry for the wolf which also has like some right to live in this land?"

"I think we in the villages, we are a little bit more - sorry about this - we are a little bit more maybe at the 'real life'. We know something sometimes is born, we know it's good if it has a good life, but sometimes also something dies and we have to kill an animal to have something to eat if we would like to eat meat." "And if all the wolves were to be killed, like it happened in Germany 100 years ago. That would make you happy?" "No, no, I don't think it's necessary.

I think he is also part of the nature, and it could be, it should be manageable to let them live here, but I think it has to be on a scale which is acceptable also for us." A few days earlier, before my trip into wolf country, while researching the story in Berlin, I met Dr Sybille Klenzendorf, a scientist and conservation expert now with the WWF, who is totally against the new law. "It was a political decision now based not on the science. Population numbers were calculated by the Ministry of Environment that we should have a minimum of 279 packs in Germany for long-term survival of the population.

We're at 209 right now. So we're actually away from that minimum threshold that they themselves calculated as a minimum." "So how did that happen?" "Politics, you know, it's politicians deciding one thing over their own scientists in the government." After many research meetings, it felt like this is a very emotional story, where everybody holds a very strong opinion. So I dug deeper into the science. And while population numbers are somewhat debated - wolf behaviour is where it gets really interesting.

"So here is the case the science makes for why hunting doesn't work. Wolves live in packs of two to sometimes over ten. There are two main wolves - they're not called alpha anymore. The scientific term is 'mum and dad'." are the only wolves that breed, and other adults are just, kind of aunts and uncles that help out. If you shoot either mum or dad, this changes the rules of the wolf pack. All the other adults can now start breeding. And they do. "So, for one, you might end up with more wolves in the area, where you wanted them gone.

The other thing is - look at this is a map that shows the movement of GPS-tagged wolves in North America. That's how much they stay in their own territories. So if you kill one wolf, a new 'stranger wolf' might enter a territory, with completely new behaviours, which could be a threat to livestock there. And nobody knows exactly why but some wolves prefer easy, chubby sheep to wild prey. So you might invite a wolf in with a more dangerous taste than the original wolf." Slovakia actually tried to hunt wolves to manage them and introduced hunting with quotas from 2014. For the next five years up to 56 wolves were killed annually. But studies found this made no significant difference to livestock losses. But Germany and others

did say 'yes' to hunting anyway, in the EU vote. "So what has changed politically, you think, within the EU and within Germany that like.?" "Parties have changed, you know, the ecologically-oriented parties have really been reduced or are out of government and it's more of a conservative government that doesn't want to invest in nature protection." The wolf has become a larger and larger talking point, with some parties in Germany running ads like this. With tensions and livestock attacks rising, the European Parliament pushed the vote through as an 'urgent procedure' - usually reserved for emergencies.

The reduction in protections was fast-tracked. 'For me, this whole Wolf debate is really an indicator of the larger agricultural subsidy debate that's happening and has to be restructured. To really support rural areas and small farmers. And the wolf is an easy target to say 'we're doing something'. I would hope that the rules and regulations and science has still a place that. It's evaluated fairly what the status of an endangered species or a protected species is and then that we together find solutions of how to coexist."

"I'm going to meet a shepherd who believes that co-existence is possible." "They are all staring at me." This is Stephan Erb, who has learned to live with wolves. "Seven years ago, we started having attacks on the sheep. So the wolf was in the herd at night. And then we. and that happened again and again over a period of two years. And in the end, there were so many attacks with so many dead sheep

that it really wasn't fun anymore." He has since adopted shepherd dogs, taking the government up on subsidies and shepherd support schemes that exist in Germany and other EU countries. He says it takes more work than before though - including training potentially aggressive dogs and staying on top of sheep protection 24x7. "'No problem, you just put dogs in with the sheep and everything's sorted with the wolf' - It's not that simple but it is possible. In our case, since we got dogs and put them to work in the herd, we don't have any dead sheep.

Even though there are always wolves around us." Erb also has electric fences that he puts up every night, which are also paid for by the government. They go a long way, he says, but all these measures are still not completely fool-, I mean wolf-proof. "We've been fighting for a long time, that we need funding and, it's supposed to come now. We won't be able to avoid removing some wolves, because we some wolves that have learnt, for example, to jump over these fences.

The majority of wolves will respect a well-built electric fence." "Really?" "Yes." "Yes, because it's not that high, I can imagine that." "No, it's not, it's not that high, but basically, a wolf actually has to learn to jump. And especially as a young wolf, if he came across a fence with some real voltage on it then he will be cured [of wanting to jump it]." Many studies agree that sometimes 'problem wolves' need to be removed to achieve human tolerance. This is best done by professionals who target and kill the right wolf or ideally the pack - unlike what happened to the wolves that were thought to be GW950M.

Studies show that a combination of guard dogs, fences, financial and social support and removing problem wolves can reduce wolf attacks by around 50 to even 100%. "I am simply a shepherd. That has simply always been my life. I just want it to continue. And hopefully it will continue into the next generation." "Yes." "And we just have to find a way to make it practical." Back at the Kenners' hotel, guests are gathering to watch the footage of the forest captured over the day. While it's charming to see that a wolf walked the same path you did,

just a few hours before, I'm am also thinking of the fate of the sheep still out there tonight, and how they can be protected. "It's not just a question of us liking wildlife. It's a question of us needing wildlife for the survival of forests and our own survival that depends on those forests. And to do this, what we really need is to involve the people whose lives are at stake to be a part of the conversation. So what do you think about wolves, and what do you think about this whole wolf debate?

Let us know in the comments below and come back every Friday for more such adventures."