BRUSSELS — French President Emmanuel Macron says a new law may be required to allow more wild wolves to be shot in France, taking advantage of looser EU protections of the predators.
“We’re not going to let the wolf develop and go into [areas] where it competes with our activities,” Macron said during a trip to Aveyron on Thursday, referring to wolf attacks on farmers’ livestock. “And so that means that we must, as we say modestly, cull more of them.”
He said that people “who invent rules and who don’t live with their animals in places where there are bears or wolves should go and spend two nights there.”
Reports of wolf attacks on livestock in France have risen over the past decade and a half, with more than 10,000 reported annual deaths in recent years.
