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Troy Bennett has workedin the French Alps for 18years. He has studiedwolves in France, Romania,Poland and Portugal. Hisstudies include tracking,radio telemetry, prey andscat analysis, kill-siteanalysis, territory mappingand howl surveys.

is situated where the Alps becomethe high Alps, not far from theborder of France and Italy. It risesto 2115 metres above sea level. It isremote and due to limited access

has not suffered from too much interference by man. There is a mixtureof oak, beech and various pines, interspersed with open grasslands andscrublands, many rivers and a lake. Hunting has been restricted for overa hundred years. Large populations of wild boar and roe deer inhabit hereand we have around a thousand Mouflon, a type of long horn sheepreintroduced around 20 years ago. There is a high diversity of wildlifeincluding wolves and lynx. Some of the land is grazed by cattle and sheep,but most is being slowly reclaimed by the forest. Baudinard, the villagewhere my story comes from, is situated on a western arm of themountain, it stands at 1100 metres and is also only partially inhabited.Two people live here all year round and four of the houses are holidayhomes. The rest are ruins, inhabited by foxes, feral cats, rats, bats anddormice.

It was in the autumn of 1992 that I first came across signs of wolves on theMassif du Monge, where at the time I was working as a goat herder. Afew years later the goats began acting strangely whilst out grazing. Ourguarding dog also began acting strangely, circling the flock constantly,hackles raised and grumbling. Our collie took to hiding between my legs.I knew there was something out there but couldn't find what. Previouslywe had a few attacks from feral dogs, but with 70 large feisty goats andour killer guard dog, they hadn't proved to be too much of a problem. Butthis was entirely different. Whatever was hiding out there never showeditself and our guarding dog didn't want to go off and intercept it with thepassion he had developed for feral dogs. It was in short a mystery.

14 UKWCT WOLF PRINT

Wolves in the French AlpsLessons in acceptance • Troy Bennett

The Massifdu Monge

ISSUE 39 SPRING 2010 15

It was only after the EU directive ruling thathomemade cheeses were dangerous, dueto salmonella, listeria or perhaps cheese flu,that we were forced to sell our goats, giveup our ideal lifestyle, and switch over tokeeping sheep for meat. It was then thatwe began to have real problems. We werelucky really we only lost about ten sheep inthat first year, but as we were just startingout and only had 200 it was worrying.

Then, in the summer of 1998, somethingterrible happened. The shepherd whoguarded for our cooperative lost almost halfthe flock in one night. 280 sheep wereherded over a cliff by no one knew what. Itwas horrific. In farming you lose stock; it'spar for the course: disease and hardwinters, predators and occasionally thievestake your animals, but this seemedunnatural and was disturbing in the deepestsense. When sheep are stressed they tendto abort, and a lot of our sheep werepregnant at this time.

280 sheep went over the cliff, but manymore hit the ground. Some didn't, theyhung on the cliffs and in trees, some werestill alive, wounded, bleeding and bleatingpitifully. We dispatched them, and wecried, us grown men hardened by mountainlife. En route to the cliff top was morecarnage, sheep dead and half-eaten,wandering wounded.

We were asked to help find and gather thelost sheep that were still wandering themountain in small bewildered groups, andbetween eight of us working in shifts thistook around two weeks. Every day wefound fresh kills and sheep with their

stomachs open, half-eaten, some woundedand bleeding.

On the Thursday morning of that secondweek, my younger brother and I took ourturn walking the mountain. We found twolambs, one paralyzed by a bite to the spineand one who would not leave its side. Wecarried them on our shoulders in propershepherd style for around three hours untilwe found a few sheep for the active one torun with. We continued to carry theparalyzed one. I was sick of killing andthought that she could be saved.

We carried her between us for about 14hours, till at around 8.30pm after finding 18sheep and two more fresh kills, we decidedto head back down the mountain to wherethe other sheep were penned beforedarkness fell. As we were passing into thewooded terrain on the lower slopes westopped, turned and looked into the trees.There, about five metres away, was a wolf.

Our eyes met and were locked, I was drawninto them. People talk about the wolvesstare and how it holds you, how it holds itsprey. When a wild wolf looks intoyour eyes it looks deep and youcannot look away. Something holdsyou there. Whether it is hypnotism orfear or something else is unsure.I  didn't feel fear, but I was held.In that look I felt something change inme, I felt an exchange of information,I don't know what the wolf took fromit, but I was left with something, a gift,as it were. I have deliberated over itmany times, something primeval thatwas dormant in me was awakenedthat day; it's not something I can writeabout, I cannot even put it into words.

It was a feeling of the wild that I'd neverimagined existed and it has stayed with meever since.

When herding on the mountain I sawwildlife about its business every day, it hadgrown used to me and I learned its ways. Ibegan to look at things with a predator'seye, looking at formations of trees ormountain features as likely places to catchunwary animals, or as lines along which toherd them into traps from which they couldnot escape. With this insight I see wherethe prey will pass, where it will fall andwhere it hides. In knowing the prey you canwork out the predators, and in having anempathy with them it leads me to find theirtracks, their scats, their kills andoccasionally to glimpse the wolves, to hearthem howling and to find myself strangelydrawn to howl back.

From that first chance encounter my life hasbeen changed, wolves have become apassion for me, I have followed the lives ofthat wolf and her family ever since.

All

phot

os: T

roy

Benn

ett

Herd protection dogs

Wolf

280 SHEEP WENT OVER A CLIFF

A LIFE-CHANGING ENCOUNTER

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It was three months later that the wolf wasofficially recognised as being in the Massifdu Monge. We lost around 700 animalsthat first year, sheep, goats and even babydonkeys.

The shepherds were not prepared forwolves and the wolves took full advantage.That winter was even harder for us: the onlystock left on the mountain was ours and thewolves followed the game down into ourvalley. Every morning we found tracksaround the barn and every night the dogswent wild. We took it in shifts to sleep inwith the sheep, waking frequently to dogsbarking or from sheep nightmares.

To find a solution I signed up for the largecarnivore project in Romania. There Ilearned guarding methods from the localshepherds, 24-hour guarding and the use ofguarding dogs. I also began learning aboutwolves. I read all the books and yes, thewolves did do some of the things written inthem but they also did things not writtendown; they were obviously not reading thesame books.

When I arrived back in France we built aprotection park so that the sheep would nothave to be crammed into the barn everynight. This consisted of a two metre highfence with another metre buried into theground to prevent tunnelling. We backedthis up with an electric fence and began tosleep well once more.

The average number of animals lost duringattacks in 1998 was 22. Today we lose onaverage one or two. We don't have aproblem with feral dogs anymore; attacksare in fact down by 98%. The wolves areeither scaring them off or eating them, andin doing this they are helping without evenknowing it. However, in many ways theyare not helping; slaughtering stock willalways be seen to be a crime, especiallywith what appears to be wanton killing,even if it is the fault of shepherds too slowor too poor to guard properly.

The summers for us are still problematic asall the herds are brought together andascend to the summer pastures, wheretogether there are too many to guardefficiently and are vulnerable. Though wedon't lose too many and nature being as itis, sheep often die for no apparent reason.Wolves are and should be a part of nature.Is it not natural that they take the

occasional sheep? The wolves have everyright to be there. It is we who have to adapt.

In 1999 we found by sightings and scatanalysis that we had six wolves in our area,a breeding pair, two yearlings and two cubs.DNA analysis proved them to be Abruzzewolves that had found their way there fromItaly. The yearlings and cubs accounted forthe surplus killings, predators have to learnto hunt and kill and with all the sheepunguarded they could have all the practicethey needed. Domestic animals seem totrigger a killing response in wolves evenwhen they have no need.

The wolves adapted to our guardingmethods. In 1998 85% of the attacks wereat night. Today, as we guard at night andlock away the flocks, the attacks are 70% byday when the sheep are out amongst thetrees or drinking at the river.

In 1999 the wolf pack split. Four remained,and two passed over the crest to create apack further north. I continued trackingthese two packs and finding their kills until2001 when they suddenly disappeared!They stopped howling. I searched butfound nothing. Then one day I came acrossa deer skeleton and, in searching around itfor tracks, I found badger and fox skulls, twodead badger cubs, rat skeletons and a deadferal cat. This was not a natural find and Isoon realised that the deer had beenpoisoned. Also two local dogs died,confirming the use of poison. Howsomeone could do this eludes me; howindiscriminate could you be? I have a list offauna that feed on carcasses, it's long and Ihave watched it happen many times. Firstcome flies, then butterflies and beetleswhilst the blood is still warm. Tits andcorvids arrive, eagles and vultures andmustalids follow. Then as night falls, ratscats, foxes, badgers and wild boar clean up,leaving nothing. Wolves, if not protectingtheir kill come last, especially if the scent ofhumans is around. How many animals areyou willing to kill before you get the oneyou were after in the first place? Even Ihave fed from fresh kills if I have been outtracking for days, living off the forest.I thanked the gods I hadn't found this one.

Poison is documented to be the mostefficient way of killing wolves and I fear itwas. Over the next few months I found thetracks of only one wolf, the large male.Maybe he'd arrived too late or had beentoo big for the poison to work properly?But had he had to watch his mate die, his

cubs? He began to be hard to track; itbecame hard to find a trace of him. I wouldthink he had gone then find a deer carcassor a single track in the bed of a river.

And then a strange thing happened. I don'tknow if he became lonely or just wanted toknow his enemy, but he began showinghimself to people. He took to sitting on theslopes opposite the shepherd, watchinghim, until the shepherd got scared andstarted to take his gun. He stepped into aclearing in front of a teenage boy outwalking. I spoke to the boy and he had seena wolf; he couldn't talk about it withoutsomething changing in his eyes. He'd seenwhat I had seen, deep into the eyes of a wildwolf.

Then in the autumn of 2003 I began to findtwo sets of prints, often together, the tracksof the male and a smaller set. I found threekills in one week, a deer, a mouflon and ayoung male wild boar all stripped to thebone. I knew then that there were morethan one, a single wolf wouldn't chancebringing down a healthy boar alone. Then,in the winter of 2004, the forest guardsfound traces of blood in some of the tracksthat they were following. DNA testsshowed this to be menstrual blood; thewolves were back and they began to howlonce more, filling the night with theirhaunting songs.

In 1990 there were no known wolves inFrance. Today there are estimated to beover two hundred, covering the Alps fromthe Mediterranean Sea in the south, all theway up and into Switzerland, across Franceeven reaching the Massif Central. They aremoving north, south, east and west,expanding to fill the ranges that were oncetheirs. Also, from the northern wastes ofRussia and Poland, wolves are reaching outto meet them. They are also expandingtheir territories in Portugal and Spain,forming a pincer movement that willhopefully once again unite the wolves ofEurope to repopulate a continent that hasbeen without them for hundreds of years.

Troy Bennett

Troy Bennett gives talks about his workand how he came to accept the wolf inFrance. He also runs wolf trekkingholidays from his base in Baudinard (seeopposite for details).

EFFICIENT GUARDING METHODS

SIGNS OF RECOVERY

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