EIn this period when the pleasure of the holiday has to deal with the harshness of times, the wolf seems to be an ideal figure because it is full of contradictions. It’s frightening – like the political, warlike and climatic dangers that hang over us – but it’s also a protected animal, respectful as it sits alongside man at the top of the food pyramid, and fascinating by its ancestral presence in our culture. An animal that threatens herds, but threatens itself and is therefore protected by the law, concentrates the paradoxes of an era that does not lack them.
If further proof of the power of wolves over humans was needed, the long Intermarché ad spot seen by more than 1 billion Internet users around the world, it would provide. The Christmas story features a wolf who learns to cook vegetables to love. Beyond the self-righteous food message of a major distributor and the advertising fable that everyone is tempted to believe, the global craze for this “big bad wolf” to become lovable sounds like a peace-making dream that we probably need.
This many representation of the wolf in an animated film confirms its strange status: while people who have encountered it in the wild are extremely rare, everyone’s mind is populated with representations and myths about it. But the dog, which disappeared in the 1930s after centuries of fighting with man and reappeared in France in 1992 in the Mercantour park, is first and foremost a reality of our mountains, of our countryside today.
Conflictual coexistence
They may just bea little over a thousand to be recorded in France, their presence concerns a large and multiple public: breeders and shepherds whose animals are just as much prey (10,524 victims qualify for compensation in 2024) in the approximately 70 departments that are now involved, but also environmental defenders, agricultural union members, agents of the French Biodiversity Office, hikers, etc. Not to mention the general public which is divided between sensitivity to the animal cause and the issues of hunting, between defense of pastoral life and biodiversity.