‘We’d like to shoot them all’: growing army of wolfdogs raises hackles across Europe

rom the moment the rangers first saw him on their trail cameras, the problem was apparent. The wolf, spotted deep in the woods of Italy’s Gran Bosco di Salbertrand park, was not grey like his companion, but an unusual blond. His colouring indicated this was not a wolf at all, but a hybrid wolfdog – the first to be seen so far into Piedmont’s alpine region. And where one hybrid is found, more are sure to follow.

In some regions they are all hybrids, and there is nothing you can do. You cannot send the army and kill everythingpoint to the presence of hybrids in nearly every European country with wolves, and in some areas their numbers are growing steadily. In Boitani’s native Tuscany, and other regions, they have become endemic, accounting forof the wolf population.

Some fear that interbreeding will result in the permanent loss of the wolf’s distinct attributes. “If tomorrow I see an animal that is black and white, with floppy ears and a long tail, and you tell me it is a wolf, I actually disappointed,” Boitani says. “I don’t want to see wolves in that way.” Wolfdog hybrids may also be better adapted to survive in a world where wolves are increasingly forced to live in urban environments. “In the modern, human-dominated world, maybe it is useful for the wolves to have some dog-like behaviour in them,” says Miha Krofel, a Slovenian researcher. “I think the costs outweigh the benefits … we don’t really have an understanding of how problematic hybrids are for the human-wolf conflict.

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