The European Union has managed to degrade the level of international protection of the wolf. His proposal to lower the degree of conservation has been approved this Tuesday by the Permanent Committee of the Berne Convention for the Conservation of Wildlife.
The wolf is going to go from the group of species with “strict protection” to one with simple protection, which also allows “its exploitation.” The EU has brought this proposal to the Convention after the Member States accepted last September the Commission’s initiative to remove the species’ status.
The decision to water down the protection of wolves does not imply immediate changes, since this requires amending the Habitats directive. The European Commission already announced at the time its intention to modify this law regarding the Canis lupus. When the status of the wolf formally changes in the Berne Convention, its conservation status may be altered in the EU directive.to adapt it to the legislation”, as the Council of Europe has explained.
So, the wolf will still have a certain level of protection, but less than what was implemented until now. This “will lead to normalizing wolf hunting” and “open the door to lowering the protection of other species”, in addition to “sending a dangerous message”, according to environmental groups such as WWF, Birdlife and the European Environment Office.
The decision “is for the political benefit of a few against scientific evidence,” says Sabien Leemans of the WWF European office after learning of the vote. “Now it is most likely that the Commission will propose doing the same with European law, which has potential negative consequences for other species.”
The path to degrading the wolf began in rural areas of Europe as the species managed to reverse its path towards disappearance thanks, precisely, to protecting it. In Spain, the decision to prohibit its hunting activated an offensive against the autonomous governments of Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and Castilla y León, always with the argument of livestock losses ahead.
In 2022, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, lost her pony in a wolf attack and that changed the game board: since then, the EC has made progress in revising downwards the protection of this carnivore. Until the proposal to degrade the conservation level came. He The European Ombudsman launched an investigation a month ago about how Brussels collected the data on which it based its unprotection plan after the complaint by the organization Client Earth.
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