The wolf, it seems, is one animal that’s always in the doghouse.

It returns to the French Alps after more than a century, and within a few years, locals claim wolves are destroying farmers’ and herders’ livelihoods. In parts of the USA, the authorities encourage and, in some cases, pay hunters to kill wolves (just to make sure there are enough elk left for other hunters to shoot at).

Listen to the folklore knocking about in parts of Europe and North America and there’s no end to the crimes committed by this cunning, ruthless predator.

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There are now around 35 wolf packs in Germany, comprising an estimated 150 animals. Image: Michelle Bender, Flickr

Last December, however, a German hunters' association in the state of Saxony added a new misdemeanour to the wolf’s rap sheet. Not only do wolves attack joggers, snatch babies from their cradles and generally make the woods unsafe for all but the most fearless of huntsmen, but now they apparently cause car crashes as well.

In December last year, two cars and a truck crashed into a herd of twelve horses that had bolted out into a road just outside the city of Dresden. Two people were taken to hospital with serious injuries and nine of the horses died. Reports say it was dark at the time of the accident and the horses had just been rounded up after escaping from their field when something had spooked them. The local hunters' association insisted that 'something' was a pack of wolves.

Wolves got the blame despite the fact that no witnesses had reported seeing any. Police did not find wolf footprints. And, of course, no one from the hunters' association was present at the scene of the accident.

But why let the facts spoil a good story? After all, wolves do exist in this part Germany ... and organisations like the Hunters' Association of Saxony do not want them there. In cases like this, the wolf has always made a good scapegoat when things go wrong.

Wolves had been hunted to extinction in Germany by the middle of the nineteenth century. They returned only after the Berlin Wall came down – before that, any animals that happened to cross into Germany through the Polish border in the east would simply be killed off by hunters. But modern-day Germany is a different place. Wolf hunting is no longer permitted and there are now around 35 wolf packs in the country, comprising an estimated 150 animals. This is largely thanks to the huge grain fields that have sprung up to produce ethanol for fuel. These fields attract large numbers of deer and wild boar – and all of that available prey in turn attracts the wolves.

Fifteen of these wolves live in Saxony. And it didn't take long for the horror stories to start coming in. Slaughtered sheep. Boar forming huge herds to protect themselves and trampling crops. Livestock behind electric fences going sterile with fear. House pets snatched from gardens. Germany, the wolf’s detractors say, is too densely populated to safely support large carnivores.

But are wolves really the threat they’re being made out to be?

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Wolves had been hunted to extinction in Germany by the middle of the nineteeth century. They returned only after the Berlin Wall came down. Image: Tom Bech, Flickr

Wolf attacks have always been common in Russia and the countries surrounding it to the east and the south. Before the mid-nineteenth century, they were also frequent in France, Scandinavia and northern Italy. But John Linnell from the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research says wolves will only prey on humans under rare and extreme circumstances. "In remote places where there's little or no natural prey, wolves use garbage and livestock as food," he says. He adds that the predators have been known to attack children left unattended or used as shepherds in remote areas. 

Dr Valerius Geist from the University of Alberta Canada says that wolves can become dangerous if they are allowed to get away with challenging human dominance, when they scavenge for food around human settlements. "Don’t kill them, just act in a fearless, confident way," he advises.

The late biologist and conservationist Gordon Haber believed that hunting wolves actually makes them more dangerous because it disrupts pack dynamics. Without the pack to take down large prey animals, lone survivors have to look for alternative ways of finding food, which often brings them into conflict with humans. 

None of this means wolves are a threat in Saxony, though. There are four times as many wolves in Europe now as there were in 1970 (as many as 25,000, according to the IUCN). And yet the only recorded attack on humans during this time took place in 1974, when a female wolf attacked and killed two children in Rante, Spain.

“These animals don’t need large wilderness areas away from humans in order to survive. They are flexible predators and can adapt to changes.”

Linnell argues that wolves have proven they can live in modified environments without threatening humans. "These animals don’t need large wilderness areas, away from humans in order to survive," he says. "They are flexible predators and can adapt to changes."

However, wolves do attack sheep, goats and other livestock, and that's the real reason they've been demonised, persecuted and almost eradicated in western Europe. It’s also the reason why certain groups do not want to see the animals return.

Linnell explains that in eastern Europe farmers and shepherds see wolves as something they have to deal with, like the weather. "In the East, people are more used to living with uncertainty and risk," he says. "In the West, we are more controlling about our environment, less tolerant."

This could explain why organisations like the Hunters' Association of Saxony were so quick to blame wolves for December's car crash outside Dresden. "With great concern we are following the uncontrolled spread of the wolf," the organisation said in a letter to the Interior Ministry. Such statements are designed to bring our irrational fears about wolves to the surface. And yet the wolf that exists in the collective consciousness of the Western world has more to do with the dark fairytales of the Brothers Grimm than it does with the real animals currently living in Saxony's forests.

And just to put your mind at ease ... In 2012, scientists at Goerlitz Seckenberg National History museum published the results of an eight-year study of wolf feeding habits in Germany. After analysing 3,000 samples of wolf scat, they concluded that livestock made up only 1% of the animals' diet. The rest? Deer and wild boar. Definitely no humans.

Top header image: Tambako the Jaguar, Flickr