Aroma Pets

How the death of the EU president’s beloved pony led to a ‘war’ on wolves

It has all the ingredients of a folk tale or fable: wolves, hunters, dark forests, a faithful steed, death, a secret vow of vengeance and a strong-willed female protagonist, nicknamed “Little Rose” by her family, who could turn out to be either the heroine or a wicked ice queen. The difference is that this story also pitches Brussels bureaucrats against conservationist non-governmental organisations. 

It began in the early hours of a misty September morning two years ago, when a lone wolf crept out of the woods just outside the hamlet of Beinhorn, in the German state of Lower Saxony. The predator then killed a chestnut pony with a white patch on her face in a paddock close to a farmhouse. In all likelihood the story would have struggled to ripple beyond the local press had it not been for the fact that the pony, Dolly, by all accounts a very sweet-natured beast, was owned by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. “The whole family is horribly distressed by the news,” she said in a statement afterwards.

Dolly, 30, was discovered some 300ft from Von der Leyen’s country home and duly became a posthumous symbol of the difficulties caused by the booming populations of wolves across Europe. Just a year after the pony’s sad demise, Von der Leyen announced a plan that conservationists claim smacks of revenge. And this week, the protected status of grey wolves was downgraded, meaning they will soon be fair game for hunters once more after 45 years of strict safeguarding. Officials have adopted European Union proposals that will allow member countries to set a quota for the number of wolves that can be killed each year from the beginning of March 2025.

Officials say this is a relatively small tweak. Brussels has proposed altering the status of wolves under the Bern Convention from “strictly protected” to “protected”. Politicians claim this will provide “further flexibility” and allow wolves to be hunted only if it becomes necessary to keep their growing numbers under control. After decades of effort that has allowed the animals to flourish once again, the European wolf population is now so large that it is classified as a species of “least concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Nevertheless, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) claims the European Commission is prioritising politics over science, and suggested the decision was influenced by “personal reasons after Commission President Von der Leyen’s pony was killed by a wolf”. Reports have previously described the 66-year-old German as pursuing a “relentless personal crusade” against wolves ever since Dolly was mauled, with diplomats in Brussels said to have described her alleged focus as both “puzzling” and “pushy”.

Conservationists worry the new ruling could be the start of a slippery slope. “Downgrading a species’ strict protection status for the political gain of a few, against scientific evidence, puts decades of conservation efforts at risk,” says Sabien Leemans, of the WWF. “Now, the European Commission is likely to propose the same change to the EU’s flagship Habitats Directive, with potential negative consequences far beyond the wolf.” The organisation argues that wolf populations in Europe have barely recovered after going extinct in most parts of the continent. “Weakening their protection could jeopardise this fragile recovery,” it said in a statement this week.

But announcing the review of wolf protection laws in September last year, Von der Leyen – known as “Röschen” by her family and as the Queen of Europe by political friends and foes alike – claimed the growing number of packs “has become a real danger for livestock and potentially also for humans”.

Animal rights activists admit that the first part is true, although manageable, but claim the second part is nonsense. The WWF points out that there has not been a single fatal attack on humans in Europe in the 21st century. Separate research found evidence of just six non-fatal wolf attacks on people in EU countries between 2002 and 2020. It is vanishingly rare for wolves even to growl at humans; wild boars are far more problematic.

They also point to a 25-year-long study conducted in the US states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming which suggested that culling wolves actually led to more livestock being killed. The theory is that breaking up packs hastens the speed with which new breeding pairs are formed – in the same way that pruning a shrub can encourage fresh growth. France agreed to wolf culls in 2017 and roughly a fifth of the population is shot each year but the number of sheep kills has continued to rise – hitting 12,000 in 2022 alone.

Opponents of the new measure claim that politicians are whipping up a culture war and exaggerating the threat of the wolves as an easy way to prove they understand the concerns of rural voters. Wolf culls have been a key pledge of the far-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party during its recent surge in popularity. They have also become a touchstone in the struggle against an over-mighty bureaucracy, with previous attempts to introduce culls getting snarled up in legal wranglings.

“Stripping wolves of their protection risks undoing decades of European conservation progress,” says Sofie Ruysschaert, of BirdLife Europe. “Instead of investing in science-based coexistence measures between humans and wildlife, leaders have chosen a political narrative that scapegoats wildlife for broader societal challenges.”

Wolves were more or less wiped out across most of western Europe in the 19th century. Local legend has it that the last wolf in Belgium, for example, was shot by King Leopold II in the 1890s. They crept back into the continent from Russia after the end of the Cold War, through Poland and abandoned farms in East Germany after the Berlin Wall had come down. The number of wolves in the EU has almost doubled since 2012. A Europe-wide assessment in September 2022 found that the total number of wolves in the 27 EU member states is likely to be “in the order of 19,000”.

From central Europe they have spread to Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark and across the Alps into France. Italy is thought to be home to the largest population, of roughly 3,300. But there are large numbers in Spain, Romania and Bulgaria too.

For conservationists, the European grey wolf became a powerful symbol of the ability of nature to heal itself but also the possibility of humans coexisting with other predators. They also point to evidence from the United States that suggests the reintroduction of an apex predator to an area can result in a host of benefits cascading through the ecosystem. When wolves returned to Yellowstone National Park, the number of grazing herbivores fell, which resulted in more diverse vegetation to the benefit of insects. The United Kingdom, one of the few European countries that haven’t sought to reintroduce wolves, is struggling with the burgeoning population of deer in the countryside, with numbers doubling to an estimated two million since 1999, which is creating problems for arable farmers and other wildlife.

For conservationists, the European grey wolf is a symbol of the possibility of humans coexisting with other predators - Freder/E+

In Europe, wolves appear to have adapted well to human-dominated habitats. But this inevitably brings them into close proximity with livestock. DNA evidence lifted from Dolly’s mangled carcass showed that she was killed by a mature male wolf known as GW950m, who was responsible for the deaths of around 70 sheep, horses, cattle and goats. He was classified as a “problem wolf”, and a permit was issued that allowed hunters to shoot him even before the latest changes to European laws (although he remains at large to this day).

Dietary analysis shows that wolves mainly eat roe deer and wild boars. But roughly a sixth of their diet can be livestock. According to the EU’s own research, roughly 40,000 sheep are killed by wolves each year. This is only 0.06 per cent of the continent’s total ovine population and farmers are compensated for every animal killed, with roughly €19 million (£15.7 million) reportedly paid out to date. Wolves also attack goats, cattle and, as the unfortunate incident in Lower Saxony illustrates, horses and ponies.

For their part, farmers say they are prepared to accept a certain amount of damage but the averages conceal areas where the problem is in danger of getting out of control. Anti-wolf fencing is very expensive and impractical in some areas. In 2023, Georg Kaltenhauser, a sixth-generation Austrian farmer, lost 17 sheep and five goats of his 50-head flock in the mountains above Hollerbach Valley. The 71-year-old recently told Irish Farmers Journal that wolves were becoming “a major threat” in the area and that farmers were becoming increasingly reluctant to have their livestock grazing on mountain pastures in the summer.

Many point to the example of Sweden, which despite supposedly being under the purview of EU laws, limits its wolf population to roughly 300 adults and, along with Finland, maintains “wolf-free zones” in the northern parts of the country in which reindeer roam. Farmers tell conservationists the situation is getting to a point where it is possible to have high-welfare, free-range livestock or an uncontrolled wolf population – but not both. Something has to give and Brussels has decreed that not all the animals can live happily ever after.

The Telegraph approached Ursula von der Leyen’s office for comment : Story by Ben Wright: The Telegraph 

Dramatic photo captures moment giant bird closes hidden 3rd eyelid while snatching locust from mid-air

A bizarre photograph captures the moment a secretary bird (Sagittarius serpentarius) closes its third eyelid as it catches a locust midflight. The image is one of the winners of the 2024 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition, which is run in collaboration with the Royal Photographic Society, and recognizes images showing hidden scientific phenomena in the natural world.

The secretary bird was captured by biologist and photographer Peter Hudson, who was named winner of the ecology and environmental science category.

Secretary bird gullet by Peter Hudson. (Image credit: Secretary bird gullet by Peter Hudson.

"Secretary birds are closely related to falcons but have evolved a stork-like mode of life, where they stalk around the savannah and feed on locusts, lizards and amphibians by punching them on the ground," Hudson said in a statement emailed to Live Science. "This bird has just caught a locust, and as it swallows its prey, it synchronously closes its third eyelid, the nictitating membrane, across its eyes to protect them from damage."

Secretary birds are large birds of prey — reaching around 4 feet (1.2 meters) in height — with an eagle-like body that sits on long, crane-like legs. They're native to sub-Saharan Africa and, while they can fly, they spend most of their time walking through long grasses looking for food.

Hudson's image reveals the bird's third eyelid, which looks like a blue ball sitting in the eye socket. According to the National Audubon Society, the third eyelid sits beneath the upper and lower lids. It's hinged at the inner side of the eye and moves horizontally across the eyeball to keep it free of dust, wind and hazards — giving the eyelids the nickname "nature's goggles."

An aerial image of four sharks hunting in a school of fish was named overall winner of the competition. It was taken by Angela Albi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany who studies interactions between sharks and fish.

"Just after sunrise or before sundown, the shallow waters of the Maldives become a clear, see-through surface," she said in the statement. "These are also the moments when we best observe the interactions between reef sharks and their prey. In this frame, captured during a research trip in 2024, a shark on the far left shifts suddenly from swimming calmly within the school to initiating a hunt, its body posture standing out from the others. While we still don't know what triggers these attacks, we analyze videos to study how sharks hunt and how their prey responds collectively." 

Story by Hannah Osborne; Live Science