Beware of boars and bears, wild dogs and wolves!
with Elysoun Ross
(Check out TRAVELS IN FRENCH AND SPANISH CATALONIA
I heard a gunshot and dropped to the ground! I was walking past my friend Marc’s potato field. Was someone shooting at me? The gunshot sounded very close and very loud. There was a second gunshot, but I couldn’t see a hunter. I followed the sound to its source. There was a strange contraption in a corner of the field. Marc explained later that it was a gas gun. He had primed it to go off at regular intervals to stop the wild boar from digging up his potatoes.
I walked on, only to be accosted by a boisterous puppy as I was passing a farm gate. The large puppy ran out, jumped up and put his huge muddy paws on my shoulders, almost knocking me off my feet. He kept jumping up. I couldn’t stop him from covering my jacket in muddy paw prints. When he calmed down, he allowed me to continue my walk.
Half an hour later, I reached a gate. I walked through it, closing it carefully behind me. The track led past a field full of sheep guarded by a huge white dog.
As soon as I walked through the gate, the dog rushed towards me barking viciously, hackles raised, and teeth bared. He told me in no uncertain terms to stay away.
I tried to reassure him by talking soothingly. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just passing through. I’m not going to harm your precious sheep’. The dog wasn’t convinced. He growled menacingly, ears back, lips pulled over bared teeth. He lunged towards me, trying to frighten me off. I continued talking to him calmly and tried to reassure him I was not a threat. I didn’t dare move. The dog alternated between barking aggressively and growling and snarling. I kept talking. Our standoff must have lasted at least ten minutes.
I couldn’t stay there forever. I had to try and get past him. I moved forward, one careful step at a time, with my heart in my mouth. I didn’t take my eyes off the dog for a second. I was afraid he might suddenly lunge forward and bite me. Where was a stick when I needed it?
Mercifully, the dog allowed me to creep slowly forward. With my voice as soothing and unthreatening as I could make it, I moved past him one slow step at a time.
Marc told me later, these huge white dogs are Pyrenean Mountain Dogs, Chien de Montagne des Pyrénées, commonly known as patous. Originally bred in the Pyrénées Orientales, they are livestock guardians with a built-in guarding instinct. At 80 centimeters tall, Pyrenean Mountain Dogs are big. They have long, thick, double coats to protect them from the weather and can weigh as much as 75kg.
Instead of being trained as family pets, they are brought up with the sheep. They are never stroked or touched by human hand. Never socialized. They are raised with the herd. Their duty is to defend and attack if they see a threat. In the old days, the dogs were fitted with heavy iron collars studded with long nails, to protect their throats when fighting off wolves and bears.
The protection of wolves. La protection des loups.
Marc and Beatrice live in a remote area of the Pyrenees where the woods are full of wild boar. They use a gas gun to try to prevent the wild boar from digging up their potatoes. But farmers in the Central Pyrenees are on the front line. They have wolves and bears as well as wild boar to contend with.
The first European Grey Wolf crossed from Italy into France in 1992. Their numbers soon multiplied, until by 2020 there were five hundred and eighty wolves in the French mountains.
France signed the Bern Convention in 1989 and ratified an EU directive in 1992 to develop a wolf population. Since then, wolves in France have been strictly protected.
The reintroduction of brown bears. La réintroduction de l’ours brun.
The brown bears of the French Pyrenees had been almost hunted to extinction when the French government began a controversial program to reintroduce bears into the Pyrenees. In 1996, three bears were captured in Slovenia and released in the Central Pyrenees. In 2006 another five bears were released, a male and four females. By 2023 the number of brown bears had grown from eight to seventy-six. Conservationists see this reintroduction as a great success. But since bears have no respect for frontiers. Many of them have settled on the Spanish side of the mountain, in the valleys of Catalonia.
Brown bears are omnivorous. Eighty per cent of their diet is herbivorous. They will only kill for food if they are extremely hungry. But Marc still had a problem with the idea letting wolves and bears loose in the mountains. He was not the only farmer who feared for his livestock.
The French government provides farmers with funding to train guard dogs, install fences and hire extra shepherds to watch the sheep during the day, round them up at night and put them in a pen.
But, despite these precautions, farmers complain that a large flock spread out over a wide area, is difficult to protect and vulnerable to attack. In the French Alps where wolves have been present for a quarter of a century, more than 90% of successful wolf attacks take place on farms that have adopted the recommended means of protection.
What is the solution?
When none of the protective measures are working, what is the solution? In some areas, long-established grazing areas have been abandoned, as too vulnerable. In others, farmers have doubled down on security with up to ten guard dogs. This has become a problem for hikers, bikers and hunters, many of whom have been attacked by overzealous patous.
After twenty years of protection, wolves have become more brazen. Understanding they will not be shot at, they are no longer afraid of humans.
Researchers have come up with a possible solution. In addition to non-lethal means of protection, they have suggested that farmers who have suffered several attacks on their flocks should be allowed to shoot to defend their herds. Wolves need to learn to fear humans. To associate the presence of humans, close to livestock, with real danger. To understand that after an attack, if they see humans near the livestock they could be trapped or shot. It works in the Balkans, Poland and Central Asia where there have always been wolves. Maybe it will work in the Pyrenees.
The reintroduction of wolves has another downside. Wolf attacks badly affect the surviving animals. In addition to abortions and loss of body condition, it can take an animal two or three years to overcome its fear and go back to grazing in a pasture where it was were attacked.
The reintroduction of wolves and bears is proving to be a costly exercise for the French government. In 2019 the government paid out thirty-eight million euros for herd protection measures. They helped sheep farmers buy and maintain over four thousand patous and paid for extra shepherds to watch over the flocks. Despite these precautions, 15 000 sheep, cattle, goats and horses are killed every year, and millions of euros are paid in compensation.
The hunting of wild boar. La chasse aux sangliers.
The following extract is from, ‘The Implausible Rewilding of the Pyrenees,’ by Steve Cracknell.
‘There are two million wild boar in France … Walkers regularly come across signs of them: hoof prints in mud; grass grubbed up for edible roots; a missing patch of bark on trees where they have rubbed to get rid of parasites. Hiking in the forest, I am sometimes startled by a rustling in the undergrowth. It is followed by an offended grunt and then a wild crashing as the boar storms away, breaking through fallen branches. The cascade of sound increases as birds take to the wing and repeat the alarm.
‘Unfortunately … in France, there are tens of thousands of road accidents each year involving wild boar and deer, with wild boar accounting for about 40% of them … There are also deaths in hunting accidents. I personally don’t feel safe when I hear the pop-pop of the guns. Two people living in nearby villages have been killed in the last ten years. The first was a woman who was out for a stroll in the vineyards with her grandson. The boar had been injured by a bullet and was fleeing the hunters. When it saw the woman and child, it charged: they were trapped between two rows of vines. Only the child was agile enough to slip between the plants.
‘The second victim was out collecting mushrooms. Bending down, parting the undergrowth, scrabbling at the earth, he was mistaken for a wild boar. The hunter hadn’t paid his license, boar hunting was forbidden that day anyway and, to cap it all, he was a retired policeman!
‘On average in France, fifteen people are killed each year in hunting accidents – again mostly boar-and deer-related – though with some four million bullets flying around perhaps this isn’t all that surprising. Logically, French people don’t blame wild boar for the hunting accidents, they blame the hunters …
‘… Wild boar is often cited as an ecosystem engineer, an animal that has an effect on the environment going well beyond what might be expected given its numbers … Wild boars are principally credited with being able to uproot bracken – like a rotovator – whilst foraging, thus allowing tree saplings to take root. Controlling bracken artificially is a difficult process requiring cutting, litter removal and herbicides over five years. If wild boar can be proved effective, they could become a kind of animal eco-warrior.’
Farming today
Forty years ago, more than twenty percent of the French population still worked on the land. Today that figure has gone down to three and a half per cent, with thirty thousand farms disappearing every year.
Worried that the countryside is being abandoned, the French government pays small farmers like Marc and Beatrice to stay on the land, subsidizing them to avoid the depopulation of the mountains.
Marc may call organic farming ‘de la poésie,’ pure poetry, but in the Central Pyrenees where farmers have wild boar, wolves and bears to contend with, small-scale farming is a precarious occupation with enormous challenges.
Further reading:
https://www.inrae.fr/en/news/wolves-and-livestock-farming-france-assessment-27-years-coexistence
Elysoun and her writing
I started publishing on Substack four months ago, in early October 2024. My Substack articles are free. Almost 3 000 people have read my articles, but I only have 150 subscribers. I would love more readers to enjoy my work.
I have written quite a few articles about our two years on the farm in St Marsal. My latest is Part Two of ‘Cows are People Too, an article about the Transhumance. Some of my articles are lighter and more personal.
My cultural articles are a more in-depth look at the frescoes of the Vall de Boi, Romanesque architecture and our local chapel La Trinité and a Vièrge à l’Enfant Exhibition in Perpignan.
A bit of personal history
I was educated at the Lycee Francais de Londres and passed my Baccalaureat.
I have travelled widely and speak 5 languages with varying degrees of fluency.
I am 78 years young and happily married to Doug Bullis, an author who has written 27 non-fiction books. You can find him on Amazon.
We live in a small town once called Grahamstown now Makhanda, South Africa’s main cultural centre. We are an hour’s drive from Port Elizabeth. Halfway between Cape Town and Durban.
I have spent the last 7 years writing a book and am now writing on Substack. My book, Leila’s Odyssey, is about a young girl on a quest to find a Magic Horn and save the world.
Leila travels from Scotland to the Gobi Desert with many adventures along the way. When she finds the Horn and blows it, the magical frequencies remind people of their connection to each other and to the world around them.
I have three children.A daughter and 4 grandchildren: girl, boy, girl, boy – 19,16,10 and 8, in Sydney, Australia. A son in Johannesburg with a four-year-old boy called Jude. And an unmarried son living in Medellin, Columbia.
I enjoy making new friends, love travelling, cats, gardening, history, culture and reading.
I would love you to share something about your life too. Visit me on my SUBSTACK and leave a comment.
