“Keep sheep, chickens and small animals indoors at night”: wolf in Westhoek

It is not clear whether the wolf is still in the Poperinge area.

“Wolf Won’t Stay”

What is certain is that the wolf is alone, two years old at the most and may have entered West Flanders from northern France. But will the wolf stay?

“I think that chance is actually very small,” says Jan Loos of Welkom Wolf.

“West Flanders may be beautiful, certainly the West Flemish hills and surroundings may be a beautiful region, for a wolf this is not a suitable habitat. Wolves have an enormous need for space. If you consider, for example, that in North Limburg one pack of wolves covers more than half of the province, then you can imagine that even half of West Flanders is not a usable habitat for a wolf.”

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“Take Precautions”

And yet the wolf might stay here for a few weeks. And of course they have to eat, deer for example. Although there are also other animals on the menu.

“For humans, the wolf is completely harmless, but smallholders, keepers of sheep, goats, alpacas, llamas, maybe even ponies and things like that, they really have to take precautions as long as that wolf hangs around here, it can camp here for a while. And then it is advisable to cage those animals at night.”

“Wolves Are Coming”

Hanging some electric wire above and below the fence can do wonders. But in any case, we better take the wolf into account, also in West Flanders.

“One thing is certain, it will come. There will be a second wolf, there will be a third and a fourth. Only the speed with which they will come, you cannot predict. -What are the chances that the wolf is spying on us now That seems zero to me, but the chance that we will see the wolf is much smaller, we are not even going to make an effort for that.

I would also like to call on the candidate wolf spotters to stay at home, leave the animal alone, you are not going to find it anyway. It’s wasted effort, don’t do it.”