A wolf was shot overnight from Wednesday to Thursday near Charolles, in an area where recent attacks took place, in Saône-et-Loire.
A wolf was shot in Saône-et-Loire, in the town of Fontenay near Charolles, Wednesday May 3 shortly before 11 p.m., according to information announced by Creusot-Infos and confirmed to France 3 by the prefecture of Saône-et- Loire this Thursday morning.
“He was about to engage in a new predation in a protected park hosting sheep“, writes the prefecture in a press release sent at midday. The wolf was killed by “an agent from the mobile intervention squad on large land predators“, of the national service of the OFB, within the framework of a “simple defensive shooting”.
In mid-April, a wolf had been formally identified on the pictures of a camera trap set by OFB agents in Dompierre-les-Ormes, south-east of Charolles. It is not known at this time whether it is the individual shot dead on Wednesday evening.
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Attacks had taken place in the previous weeks in the sector: 25 attacks around Tournus, Cluny, Charolles and Le Creusot, as indicated by the prefecture during a meeting on April 19.
Following this meeting, the breeders had asked for more means to protect themselves from the wolf, and in particular the possibility of shooting the wolf more freely. For his part, the prefect Yves Séguy had announced the imminent reinforcement of the national “wolf” brigade, “to have his expertise and his technicality in reinforcement of our lieutenants of louveterie“.
This is the third wolf killed in Saône-et-Loire, where the canis lupus has been present for a short time. After a first salvo of attacks in 2020, a first individual was shot dead on Friday November 13, 2020 in Saint-Romain-sous-Gourdon, south of Montceau-les-Mines. Since the beginning of the summer, 119 sheep had been killed in the area.
Then in 2021, a second wolf was killed on June 8 in Flagy, north of Cluny. The predator had been pulled by agents of the mobile intervention brigade, OFB wolf-keepers, while the animal was near a herd of sheep.
► More information to follow.