Wolves attacked a flock of sheep in the Sheep Park near Odoorn during the day. Five sheep were killed and about twenty were injured.
She assumed that wolves do not attack during the day. And so Berber Ubbink let her sheep onto the heath of the Odoorn Sheep Park on Friday morning as usual. When she returned a few hours later, she saw a gruesome scene. About twenty sheep were injured and two were dead. “We had to put three others to sleep immediately,” she says.
According to Ubbink, it is inevitable that a pack of wolves has attacked the herd. “That’s what the appraiser who was here also said. So many sheep have been bitten. It has been pretty quiet here so far, but I think the wolves of Grolloo have shifted their area of activity.”
Behind grid at night
Ubbink, from the Natural Odoorn Foundation, is in charge of approximately 220 hectares of nature reserve in the Sheep Park. She places the animals, about a hundred of them, behind a fixed wolf grid at night. Every morning she lets them out to graze. “In the summer already at six o’clock, now a little later, around half past seven. Much later is not possible, because they must have enough time to graze.”
Ubbink does not know when the wolves attacked. “There was no one there. It is not a flock that goes out with a shepherd. I found them at half past ten. The dead sheep were still warm and the blood was fresh. It must have happened at dawn. The sun was already up when I let them go, but of course the weather was quite dark.”
‘Wolf attacks during the day are less common’
Wolves do not often attack during the day because they are shy animals. But it is possible, confirms wolf expert Glenn Lelieveld of the Mammal Society. Wolves adapt to their habitat. “They can also hunt during the day. It’s less common, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
Ubbink knows of another herd that was attacked during the day, but that was in the Veluwe. “Until now it only happened here at night.”
Stressed out
She doesn’t know what to do next with the sheep at the Sheep Park. She took two injured animals into her home to care for and put the sheep that wanted to be behind the fence.
“But there are also a lot of sheep so stressed that I couldn’t catch them. I really don’t know what to do now. We can’t keep the sheep behind the grid all the time. Then they will be hungry in no time. And I don’t have time to move nets every day. And I can’t always stand on the heath with the herd.”
‘fencing off the entire sheep park is not an option’
The question arises whether a flock should not always have a shepherd with dogs with it or whether it should stand behind a fence.
Ubbink: “There are more herds that roam freely. And what about all those sheep walking in meadows with only a few wires around them? It’s crazy that we allow the wolf here! If you want to graze nature reserves, you cannot have a wolf there. Actually, the entire Sheep Park should be fenced, but Staatsbosbeheer is really not going to do that. That takes an endless amount of wire. Moreover, people can no longer get in. A gate for humans is also a gate for the wolf. And a wolf-resistant grid is never wolfproof. It offers no guarantee.”