Hunters and farmers in Greece are demanding the right to cull wolves after one attacked a child on a beach this month, warning that the protected species is multiplying in the wild.<\/p>\n
The animal “grabbed” the five-year-old girl by the waist as she played on a beach in the Halkidiki peninsula, northern Greece, her mother told Skai TV.<\/p>\n
A bystander drove the wolf off by throwing stones, but it later followed the girl and her mother to their apartment yard, she said.<\/p>\n
Greek hunters have long maintained that the wolf population in Greece is much greater than estimated, increasing the threat to hunting dogs and livestock.<\/p>\n
Local officials said they were laying traps in the area but that if the animal could not be captured, it would be killed.<\/p>\n
Yorgos Iliopoulos, a biologist and wolf expert with the environmental NGO Callisto, said the wolf involved appeared to be unusually accustomed to humans.<\/p>\n
“This animal evidently either found food in this area, or was erroneously fed by a human as a cub,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Its behaviour cannot be reversed and it is better to remove it, preferably through capture,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Thessaloniki-based organisation aims to study, protect and manage the populations and habitats of large carnivores such as bears and wolves and other endangered species.<\/p>\n
In early 2024, Callisto helped remove a young wolf from the Greek police academy in Amygdaleza, near Athens.<\/p>\n
The young male was collared and released in the foothills of Mount Parnitha, where wolves have returned after a six-decade absence.<\/p>\n
From his studies on the Parnitha wolves, Mr Iliopoulos said that the packs in the area “are attracted by the dead bodies of farm animals or dogs”.<\/p>\n
Wolf population in Greece estimated at 2,075<\/p>\n
According to a recent six-year study by Callisto,the wolf population in Greece is estimated at 2,075.<\/p>\n
Their range is also spreading, Mr Iliopoulos said.<\/p>\n
“Wolves are now in Attica,” the region surrounding Athens, and in the southern mainland “there has been a resurgence in the Peloponnese over the past two or three years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Some individuals crossed the Isthmus at Corinth and dispersed into the Peloponnese. Last winter, we confirmed the presence of a breeding wolf pack in the Taygetos (mountain) region,” he added.<\/p>\n
The abandonment of agriculture in the mountains and increased availability of prey such as wild boar and deer have help the wolf population rebound, he said.<\/p>\n
“Similar trends are seen with all large mammals in Greece and Europe.”<\/p>\n
Sightings of hears also on the rise<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, sightings of bears in inhabited areas have also increased in the Greek countryside.<\/p>\n
Last week, an 80-year-old man in Zagori, northwestern Greece, was injured by a brown bear that entered his garden looking for food.<\/p>\n
Wildlife group Arcturos estimates there are between 550 and 900 bears in Greece, an increase over the last two decades, but still not high enough to lift hunting restrictions.<\/p>\n
Bears began approaching inhabited areas in Greece around a decade ago, but authorities have long neglected to set up rapid response teams, the group said in a July statement.<\/p>\n
“The Greek countryside is not what it was 20 years ago, and so it would be impossible for bears to be the same too,” said Arcturos’s general director Alexandros Karamanlidis.<\/p>\n
Callisto spokesperson Iason Bantios called the bear sightings “a manageable phenomenon that should not cause panic”.<\/p>\n
“It requires adequate operational organisation, proper planning, and targeted action protocols,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hunters and farmers in Greece are demanding the right to cull wolves after one attacked a child on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-170336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom","11":"tag-unitedkingdom","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}