Wolf near Col Agnel in France does not attack livestock and shows little fear of people

Hautes-Alpes, reportage

A high, piercing whistle slices through the stillness — short, sharp, like shattering glass. A second cry answers it, then a third. The marmots raise the alarm. At the mouth of a burrow, four of them stand frozen, upright on their hind legs, half-hidden among the grasses stirred by gusts of wind, their gaze fixed on some unseen threat. “There, there, he’s there!” exclaims researcher Irina Andryushchenko-Basquin, binoculars glued to her eyes. “Get in the car.”

With the hazard lights on, the vehicle halts thirty seconds later, its wheels barely away from the cliff edge. The rodents have vanished, vanished into their tunnels. Behind a shrub, two orange-tinged ears appear: the wolf. A heavy head on a thick neck. “He’s hunting,” whispers photographer Paul Sionneau, Irina’s companion. The predator’s alert eyes already signal the fate of the inattentive marmot caught in its sight. One last sharp cry cleaves the air, and the wolf melts back into the scrub, a compact shape with prey clamped between its jaws.

“He looks a bit ugly in his summer coat,” Paul says with a half smile. “He shed in early August. You should have seen him in June… he was magnificent.” Nicknamed Daniel — a nod to the pass where he set up camp in May — this roughly two- or three-year-old wolf displays unusual behavior: he shows no fear of people, never attacks the grazing livestock nearby, and seems to hunt only marmots. “In France, nothing like this has been documented,” Irina notes. “Unfortunately, the risk that he will be shot is real and immediate.” Either state authorities could authorize lethal control, or a poacher might take matters into his own hands.

At midday, filmmaker Jean-Michel Bertrand joins the pair at the local mountain hut. “What a shame! A real robbery. And to think I spent years freezing my butt off in hides,” he laughs. In June 2013 he, too, had a wolf encounter in a valley whose name he keeps secret. A fleeting sighting was followed by a long dry spell — not a single usable image for more than a year despite nightly bivouacs. “I even began to think I had dreamed that encounter,” he recalls, until one day the whole pack accepted the strange two-legged intruder. He turned the experience into a trilogy of documentaries, including Vivre avec les loups, released in cinemas in 2023.

Waiting — days, months, years — is usually the fate of photographers enchanted by this great predator. But Daniel is anything but ordinary. Paul’s phone holds hundreds of videos. On July 25, the canid approached him to within two meters. A twenty-minute face-to-face, indescribable: “I felt tears welling up. I swallowed them so as not to be overwhelmed by emotion. He was so close I couldn’t focus.”

“This whole story is strange,” Jean-Michel continues after ordering his cheese pie. “Where the hell did that bastard come from?” For now, the leading theory is that Daniel originated in Italy — the Abruzzo region in particular, in the heart of the boot, where wolves never disappeared. There, hunting them is strictly forbidden and people have learned to coexist with them. That culture, almost unique in Europe, sometimes produces animals unusually tolerant of humans.

Perhaps high pack density drove Daniel away from that massif. In search of a new territory and a mate, he might have dispersed alone some 600 kilometers northwest, crossing the Franco-Italian border. The French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) told Decatur Metro that they had collected his scats to clarify his origins and determine his lineage precisely.

Back at their hideout, the trio scans the valley with binoculars. No wolf in sight. Kestrels hover as if suspended on a thread in their so-called “hover of the Holy Spirit.” Suddenly one plunges headlong into pink fireweed and re-emerges with a lizard in its beak. “How beautiful,” savors Jean-Michel, before returning to talk of the wolf: “Say, does Daniel lift a leg to pee?” That posture reveals social rank: dominant wolves lift a leg to mark their status, while lower-ranking individuals squat to urinate. “Yes,” Paul replies. “And all the more so when he runs into the female. That opens the door to forming a pair.”

Observed in early August, the female — named Lenga by the photographer — is far more wary than Daniel. If he gets too close to people, she vanishes. “On the day of the eclipse, nearly 2,000 people climbed the pass,” Paul continues. “It was disastrous. Both of them ran away. He came back quickly, but she didn’t. I hope she wasn’t shot.” On July 28, about 20 kilometers to the north, investigators from the OFB and the gendarmerie detained and placed three people in custody on suspicion of poaching; their trial in criminal court is scheduled for January 2027.

By then, Daniel has probably moved on. As the warm season wanes, marmots will slip into hibernation, ending an easy banquet for the wolf. “He’s likely to go find a forest where he can feed on hares and roe deer,” Paul thinks. “That is, if he’s still alive,” Irina adds. Since flocks have summered in the high pastures, the researcher fears that state services might decide to order the animal’s killing.

A 4×4 pulls up beside them. “So? Is he around today?” asks its driver — a local shepherd. “One day Daniel chased some of his cows just for fun,” Paul says. “If the shepherd had reported that to the Departmental Directorate of Territories [DDT], the wolf would have been shot immediately. Thankfully, he didn’t report it.”

“Everything can change very quickly here,” laments Irina Andryushchenko-Basquin. “The recent downgrade of the species at the European level has made it much easier to obtain authorization to kill.” Affected livestock owners can request and receive from the DDT a receipt granting them the right to shoot a wolf. “Even without an actual attack, without any fladry or guard dogs, without any scaring-off measures,” she adds. “You can kill a wolf like you squash a fly.”

On August 4, the Association for the Protection of Wild Animals (Aspas) and Férus — two groups working to protect wolves — sent a joint letter to the DDT of the Hautes-Alpes to express their “deep concern” at the prospect of such an outcome. “We have been witnessing a liberalization of shootings for some time,” Thierry Ruf, Aspas’s wolf coordinator, told Decatur Metro. “Some DDTs hand out authorizations on the fly to buy social peace with aggressive livestock unions. It’s gotten out of hand.”

Wolf attacks kill a handful of animals each year in France. In response to these tragedies, many herders organize protections for their flocks, and some demand easier access to lethal control.

Asked by Decatur Metro, the OFB’s terrestrial large predators department said it had intervened in the area: “We have observed no threatening behavior toward the flocks. Nothing justifies scaring off or shooting him.” Will these findings influence the DDT’s decision? “We have passed on our analyses to them. Now you have to ask them,” they replied.

So far, “the DDT has not received any complaint concerning this wolf,” confirms Perrine Pellenq, chief of staff at the Hautes-Alpes prefecture. “[It] does not therefore plan to task the lieutenants of the hunt with carrying out defensive shootings.” However, if a receipt were eventually issued, the mere presence of the wolf near livestock could be lethal for him: “Defensive shooting is carried out close to the flock concerned,” Pellenq adds. “At night, when a wolf approaches a flock, you cannot know in advance whether he will attack or not.”

The golden tints clinging to the ridgelines will soon leave the valley bathed in bluish dusk — the perfect moment for one last bow. “There, there!” In a flash, Paul leaps into his vehicle and speeds after the ghost. “He caught another marmot. I think he went to bury it in his larder on the other side of the stream,” he says, driven by instinct, heart pounding. He stops and kneels at the base of a rock. Time stretches and doubt creeps in. Then, again, with his gaze locked onto Paul’s, Daniel appears.

Similar Posts

• Mexican Ranchers Embrace Wolves Instead of Hunting Them: A Tale of Peaceful Coexistence
• Golden Jackal Spotted in the Alps: Confirmed Presence Shocks Scientists
• Vincent Munier’s ‘Le Chant des forêts’ Hits Cinema Milestone: Over 1 Million Tickets Sold!
• Zachary Quinto’s Eye-Opening Insight: Can Oliver Mend His Broken Bonds with Josh?
• “Human Boundaries Enforced on All”: Walls and Fences Pose Threats to Wildlife

Ashley Morgan

Hi, I’m Ashley from the Decatur Metro team. I share essential information for a sustainable and responsible lifestyle.