It was the talk of the town this weekend in Goirle, the wolf that walked through the village limping with a broken leg and was seen by dozens of people. The event raised more questions about the wolf. Because what should you do if you encounter a wolf? Wolf expert Johan Mees knows the answer.
“There is really something going on with the wolf when it comes close to humans,” says Mees. “He is not interested in people at all. In fact, wolves are afraid of people.”
But it can still happen that you bump into one, like in Goirle. “If a wolf comes closer, there is something that attracts its attention,” says Johan Mees. “That could be a stray dog. Because dogs are either competitors or a possible partner for wolves. They are of the same origin and can have offspring from each other, so they find them interesting.”
It is also possible that the wolf was once fed by humans. Then he associates people with food and in those exceptional cases a wolf might come to a human.
But what should you do if you encounter one?
“Stand still,” Mees says decisively. “And first let’s see what he does. That happens in a split second. I have seen wolves for 1,2,3 seconds and then they run away.”
Johan Mees thinks that the chance of you encountering him is very small, but he knows that you have to chase the wolf away with wide arm gestures and loud shouts. “Talking, clapping your hands and shouting loudly: Hey wolf, go away, go away. You make yourself big. And then that wolf really takes his money and makes sure he’s gone.”
And what should you not do?
Johan Mees knows what doesn’t work with wolves. “That’s running away. The moment you do that, the wolf thinks: that’s interesting, there’s movement in it, I’m going to go after it. And then you become the wolf’s prey or toy.”
There is one more thing you should also think about when you see a wolf, says Johan Mees. That means taking a photo or a video and passing it on to the wolf reporting center of B12 (and of course to Omroep Brabant) so that they get a good idea of the number of wolves in the province and where they are located. They can then also warn sheep farmers and possibly municipalities. At the moment it seems that not one wolf has settled permanently in Brabant. They occasionally cross the border from Belgium, but they also return.