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Mongabay NewscastAuthor: Mongabay.com
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As Europe's wolf populations recover, coexistence calls for a holistic approach
Episode 316
Tuesday, 3 November, 2026
For a time during the 19th and 20th centuries, gray wolves were practically extinct across Western and Central Europe. Now, thanks to strict protection measures in countries across the region, their populations have risen over the past couple of decades — including a reported surge of 58% between 2012 and 2022. On the one hand, this is a conservation success story. On the other, however, it amplifies long-standing sociocultural challenges, namely human-wildlife coexistence with farmers. Wolves sometimes prey on livestock, which can cause financial harm to farmers. Joining the Newscast this week to unpack these sociocultural challenges is social scientist Emu-Felicitas Ostermann-Miyashita, from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. Ostermann-Miyashita has studied the conflict between humans and wolves specifically in Germany, and has published suggestions for sustainable wolf-livestock coexistence. However, she says the problems are much less polarized than European media may portray them. "Some people hate wolves, some people love wolves, but that was also something which I wanted to look into whether that's true or not," she says. "And all of my studies which I've conducted so far on … the public perception or social side hint to a much more like gray [area regarding] public attitudes or public perception towards the species." But the solutions are not black and white, and require a combination of incentives for wolf presence, livestock protection, and further study of measures such as lethal control, where much of the debate currently stands. "At the moment, I would say there's not enough evidence to say whether lethal control can be effective or not, but from the existing data it rather suggests that it's much more complex than we think it is," she says. Lethal control may also be more difficult than protection measures, she suggests, as "the effectiveness of reducing damage is definitely much higher by protection than by lethal control at the moment." Please take a minute to let us know what you think of our podcast here. Mike DiGirolamo is the host & producer for the Mongabay Newscast based in Sydney. Find him on LinkedIn and Bluesky. Banner image: Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus), Pescheray, France. Photo by Clément Bardot via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). —- Timecodes (00:00) Wolf recovery in Europe explained (09:47) Problems with the EU voting to loosen protection (14:25) A holistic approach to coexistence (18:42) Tensions between farmers and rewildling (23:12) More data is needed (25:46) Collaborative approaches are needed (27:29) The nuances behind lethal control (31:50) The human dimension behind wolf-livestock interaction (35:22) Key takeaways & media portrayal (39:34) What Europe can learn from nations living with carnivores
