In Switzerland, wolves were exterminated and declared extinct in the mid-19th century, victims of hunters and livestock farmers. Since the late 1990s, however, these elusive predators have begun returning to Switzerland, migrating from the Franco-Italian Alps to recolonise the lands of their ancestors, hoping, perhaps, that humans had exhausted their atavistic hatred of wolves. In Switzerland the wolf is now a protected species, but the law is not equal for all. Exceptional culls are in fact permitted "where individual wolves cause significant damage". M75 is one such case.

The story of wolf M75

M75 is a male wolf and was sentenced to death by the Swiss authorities, who issued the authorisation for its culling on 24 March last. Its crime? Having killed livestock, behaving exactly as a wolf does. The animal, of Italian origin, is said to have killed around forty sheep in the Bregaglia, Mesolcina and Leventina valleys between 21 January and 8 February 2017.

Wolf hunt

M75 thus exceeded the threshold of twenty-five livestock animals preyed upon by a single individual within the space of one month, as permitted under a Swiss federal hunting ordinance. No one, however, has yet managed to locate the animal, which moves continuously across large ranges and makes brief appearances in various Swiss cantons. It is currently believed that the wolf has left the country and taken refuge in the forests of Germany, far from Swiss rifles (or more probably in search of a female).

The WWF's position

The authorisation to cull the wolf provoked protests from WWF Switzerland, which had initially filed an appeal against the cull. The environmental organisation subsequently decided to withdraw the appeal. "The news is recent that no appeal will be made against the culling order — not because we agree with the killing, but because the genetic tests carried out on the predation sites leave not the slightest hope of legal success," explained Massimo Mobiglia, president of WWF Italian Switzerland. "We do not share the measure also because, given the animal's mobility, we are convinced that other individuals could be culled under this order."

Protecting wolves and flocks

The WWF also reiterated the need to focus more on the protection of flocks, adopting preventive measures, such as the use of livestock guardian dogs — the Maremma-Abruzzo sheepdog being particularly recommended. "Our role has always been the protection of nature, and both the wolf and the sheep are part of it," said Massimo Mobiglia. "It is time to take flock protection seriously, using all the means at our disposal, rather than eliminating large predators."

M75 like Jj1, Daniza and many others

Wolf M75 risks meeting the same end as Jj1 and Daniza, to name but two — those wild animals that followed their own nature, failing to conform to the human clichés that had been imposed upon them, and were killed for it. Jj1, also known as Bruno, was a young brown bear (Ursus arctos arctos) barely two years old, born in the Adamello-Brenta park as part of Life Ursus, an EU-funded repopulation project to bring bears back to Trentino. In May 2006, Jj1 decided to leave its birthplace in search of a territory of its own; before it lay a network of paths that could lead it to northern Europe. The bear crossed Austria and headed into Germany, where the reception was anything but warm — the German authorities immediately announced that they wanted it dead. So began the flight of Jj1, hunted by dogs and hunters, though the bear seemed to know what it was doing, apparently moving mainly along watercourses to avoid leaving tracks. Its flight from a world no longer capable of accepting its wild and primordial side ended in the night between 25 and 26 June, on the shores of Lake Spitzing, in the district of Miesbach, in Bavaria. There a group of hunters surprised it in its sleep and killed it. Daniza, meanwhile, was a female brown bear killed in 2014 in Trentino, guilty of having attacked a mushroom picker — an ignorant and reckless one — in order to defend her cubs. Daniza's flight with her two cubs lasted almost a month, ending on the night of 10 September, when the officials monitoring her movements shot both her and one of her cubs with anaesthetic darts. The bear did not survive the sedation; her heart gave out. Next on this list risks being wolf M75, a modern-day rebel who still nurtures the illusion that, at the end of the day, there is still room for wild animals in this world.