The documentary Wolvendrift shows how Drenthe struggles with the wolf. Journalist Petra Wijnsema followed the events surrounding the wolf for a year. RTV Drenthe will broadcast Wolvendrift tomorrow evening.
Wijnsema is the only journalist present when a wolf is shot dead in Wapse on July 9. “It was Sunday and coincidentally I was on duty that day as a weekend reporter for RTV Drenthe. Early in the morning at 8 a.m. I received a call from former VVD member Johan Moes that a fellow villager of his had been bitten on the arm. Soon After I arrived there, the wolf was shot dead. I didn’t see it, but I heard the shot,” says Wijnsema.
She also filmed how Wageningen University inspects a wolf that had recently been killed. “Within two hours I had to be on site at the warehouse where it would happen. I couldn’t arrange a cameraman at such short notice, so I filmed it myself. Fortunately, that day I was able to make time for that. Sometimes you have to be a little I’m actually ‘on’ the whole time to be able to film if something were to happen,” says Wijnsema.
The idea for the documentary arose in the autumn of 2022. “We had a discussion with a large part of the editorial team about how we as RTV Drenthe should deal with reporting about the wolf. During that discussion it was as if lightning struck: here I should make a documentary about it.”
The documentary maker himself says he is not for or against the wolf. “It is a very complicated problem. I understand that it is very frustrating for sheep farmers if the wolf does enter their wolf-resistant grid. At the same time, the wolf has chosen to be here. I think we are only at the beginning of a learning process. But I think the wolf is not going away anymore, so we have to find a way to live with the animal.”
She has noticed that developments are happening very quickly in Drenthe. “I never thought that we would want to start shooting the wolf so quickly in Drenthe and make Drenthe a wolf-free region. The province initially said that it was mainly in favor of protective measures and within a year that shifted to call to become a wolf-free region.”
Where is it going? “That is difficult to say. The wolf in our country behaves very differently than some wolf experts predicted. For example, they said that a wolf does not take horses or cows and that still happens. The situation in Drenthe cannot actually be compared with other places because a zero level for wild boars and red deer, lots of livestock and fragmented nature reserves.”
The documentary Wolvendrift can be seen on Saturday at 7 p.m. on TV Drenthe and will be repeated at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. Wolvendrift will also be repeated on Sunday.