Boars, we read recently, are becoming a nuisance in such a prize town as Nice; bears have been imported from Slovenia to make up for falling numbers in the Pyrenees, with mixed reaction; wolves, as we have seen here, having penetrated France from Italy, are spreading across the country, causing some havoc among sheep farmers, and now a judge in Oslo, according to the New Scientist, has forbidden sheep farmers in southern Norway from shooting a pair of wolves which are among the last in Scandinavia. Environmental campaigners in Norway have hailed the judge's verdict "as an important reaffirmation of the country's commitment to protecting endangered species". Yet the very day after the judge's ruling, a wolf from another pack was killed by a train. Some people suspected that the victim had been killed illegally, then left on the line to cover up their deed, according to a spokesman for the World Wide Fund for nature in Oslo. But the train driver says that the wolf ran onto the tracks and thus met his death. It wasn't a lone wolf, by the way. There is a pack of nine which lives about 150 kilometres south of Oslo. It is officially protected. But when another mated pair formed a new pack by settling west of the river, i.e. on the other side from the nine already mentioned, farmers who are afraid for the safety of their sheep, asked permission to kill them. And it seems that such action would be illegal according to the World Wide Fund for Nature, and writes the New Scientist, it appears the courts have agreed.
How would we feel in Ireland if by some accident (hardly possible) or a deliberate introduction, news spread of a couple of wolves being on the loose in our country - even in its bleakest spots? We know what the farmers would say, and even the most jaded of city cynics could hardly see any virtue in such an addition to our wildlife. Mind you, there has been some (urban) welcome for the return to France of this animal, which spread naturally, it seems.
But the last wolf in Ireland was long ago, and writers can't even agree when it disappeared. There are many `last wolves' - from Antrim to Kerry and Connemara, which Fairley lists in his An Irish Beast Book.
He quotes William Thompson, the famous naturalist as listing Glenarm as one of the three likely last (1712) spot. And a slapstick account of an escape by a horseman in Kildare, by a pack which wounded his steed. As he got to his door: "Oh, James, James let me in - my horse is ate with the wolves."