No new topic for this column: I need to go back to my column on the wolf of 18 May. A column in which I called for a clearer policy and more nuance around the subject of ‘wolves in the Netherlands’, including from WUR. I was pleased to see that the Faunabescherming (the Dutch Society for the Protection of Wildlife) reads my columns and shares them on X.
My children are behind a ‘wolf-proof’ fence now too
Nice that my column calling for more policy and nuance is shared on the former Twitter – surely the go-tomedium for consensus-forming. Sadly, some people on that platform held it against me that I would like to let my children play in the woods near Zeist. I can reassure those people: my children’s after-school care centre has cordoned off the play area so the children can’t go into the woods. So the children are inside a ‘wolf-proof’ fence now too.
This measure was taken because a toddler and then an older child were ‘harassed by a large animal’ on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, in the words of the Midden-Nederland police. The tension around this issue is demonstrated, in my view, by the number of hours a spokesperson must have sweated to find a formulation that avoided the words ‘wolf’ and ‘bite’. Because the toddler wasn’t bitten: although the toddler, the father and the daycare centre staff all say otherwise, the experts from the Mammal Society see ‘no possible sign of a bite’ on the photos of the wounds. What a relief!
Once again, I call on all parties: come up with a serious policy and recommendations on how to deal with the wolves. Thanks to a court ruling in response to opposition from the Dutch Society for the Protection of Wildlife, and from Animal Rights, the provincial government is prohibited from trapping, stunning, tagging or paintballing this particular wolf that has an interest in children and dogs. From a legal perspective, nice for the wolf perhaps, but it only makes opponents keener to amend European legislation to enable policymaking on the wolf. And there, potentially, lies a greater danger for wolves and for nature as a whole. As the left-wing MEP Bas Eickhout wrote in the Financieele Dagblad newspaper: ‘The Commission may say it only wants to change the status of the wolf, but the moment the law is broken open, everything is on the table. Right-wing politicians will seize the opportunity to weaken all the European nature legislation. And then the political storm surrounding the wolf will pose a danger to all of nature in Europe.’
Guido Camps (40) is a vet and a researcher at Human Nutrition and OnePlanet. He enjoys baking, bee-keeping, and unusual animals.
