Row rages over calls for cull as wolves spread across France

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/row-rages-over-calls-for-cull-as-wolves-spread-across-france-2325946.html

The wolf, pursuing its lightning reconquest of France, has reached the Vosges Mountains on the Alsace-Lorraine border for the first time in 80 years.

After two decades of pro- and anti-wolf battles between nature-lovers, shepherds and politicians, even some supporters of the grey wolf (Canis lupus) are growing alarmed by the rapid progress of the world largest wild canine through the French countryside.

A mystery animal which has been attacking sheep in the Vosges since April has been identified by a remote-control camera as a wolf.

A handful of Italian wolves, which recolonised the French Alps around 1993, are thought to have multiplied to about 200 animals in 20 packs, reaching as far west as Cantal in Auvergne and as far north as Franche-Comté on the Franco-Swiss border, and now the Vosges. Within a decade, one expert predicted yesterday, the wolf could have ranged as far as the large forests just south of Paris.