Welcoming Wolves? Governing the Return of Large Carnivores in Traditional Pastoral Landscapes

Abstract

Wolf populations are recovering across Europe and readily recolonize most areas where humans allow their presence. Reintegrating wolves in human-dominated landscapes is a major challenge, particularly in places where memories and experience of coexistence have been lost. Despite the observed expansion trends, little has been done to prepare communities for the return of these apex predators, or to understand what fosters and perpetuates coexistence. In this study, we present a theoretical framework for resilient coexistence based on four conditions: Effective institutions, large carnivore persistence, social legitimacy, and low levels of risk and vulnerability, nested within the social-ecological systems (SES) concept. To empirically show how the conditions can be manifested and interconnected, and how this knowledge could be used to improve local coexistence capacities, the framework is applied in a case study of human–wolf relations in Spain. We examined three traditionally pastoral landscapes at different states of cohabitation with wolves: uninterrupted presence, recent recolonization, and imminent return. We found that both the perceptions of wolves and the capacity to coexist with them diverged across these states, and that this was largely determined by a diversity of vulnerabilities that have not been recognized or addressed within current management regimes, such as economic precarity and weak legitimacy for governing institutions. Our results illustrate the importance of working in close contact with communities to understand local needs and enhance adaptive capacities in the face of rural transitions, beyond those directly related to wolves. The framework complements emerging tools for coexistence developed by researchers and practitioners, which offer guidance on the process of situational analysis, planning, and resource allocation needed to balance large carnivore conservation with local livelihoods.

Where wolves were: setting historical baselines for wolf recovery in Spain

“…Describing wolf distribution at the beginning of the 20th century would involve having detailed distribution maps or modelling abundant and reliable finescale presence data from that period. However, we do not know of such data for Spain, albeit it is available for Portugal (Petrucci-Fonseca, 1990). The rigidity of the period established as a historical reference in the legal framework, set as unique for all species of conservation concern in Spain, hinders its adaptability to a complex reality with the many species-level specificities mentioned above (Oficialdegui et al, 2020).…”

“…The Iberian wolf subspecies Canis lupus signatus historically declined in range to reach a minimum distribution range during the second half of the 20th century (Petrucci-Fonseca, 1990;Rico & Torrente, 2000). In Portugal, wolf decline is still ongoing (Torres & Fonseca, 2016), while in Spain the species seems to have remained in rather a stable state since the 1980s, both in terms of the number of packs and range extent (Ordiz, Canestrari, & Echegaray, 2022).…”

Patterns of livestock loss associated with a recolonizing wolf population in Germany

“…The recovery of large carnivore populations in cultural landscapes of Europe is a remarkable wildlife conservation success story (Chapron et al, 2014;Cimatti et al, 2021), and yet presents daunting challenges for human-carnivore coexistence in agricultural landscapes (Nyhus, 2016;Pimenta et al, 2018;König et al, 2020;Linnell et al, 2020;Pettersson et al, 2021). Predation on livestock by large carnivores such as grey wolves (Canis lupus; hereafter: wolf/ wolves) represents a persistent problem both in areas recently recolonized by wolves and in those with well-established wolf populations (Ciucci and Boitani, 1998;Kaczensky, 1999;Gula, 2008;Gervasi et al, 2021a;Gervasi et al, 2021b;Fedyńet al, 2022;Khorozyan and Heurich, 2022).…”

Developing A Territorial Approach to Wolves through Agri-food Practices. A Survey on the Relations Between Biodiversity and Food in Belledonne

“…The fear of rural actors of "losing their landscape", in connection with the conservation of wolves, is described elsewhere, particularly in Spain and Sweden (Petterson et al, 2021;von Essen and Allen, 2018)…”