A gray wolf was seen in Blaru in Yvelines on November 11 and another in Cinq-Mars-la-Pile in Indre-et-Loire on Friday November 26, franceinfo learned from the French Biodiversity Office, confirming information from France Bleu Paris and France Bleu Touraine on Saturday 27 November. They were identified by the OFB through photos.
The OFB also confirmed the presence of a gray wolf in the Yvelines, by analyzing a photo taken by a hunter. This is the first time that a wolf has been officially detected in Île-de-France for 30 years, but the collective of the Observatoire du loup tells France Bleu Paris that the animal has been present in the region for a decade, in reality. The collective says it spotted some in Seine-et-Marne in 2014 and in Val-d’Oise and Yvelines in 2017, but this has not been confirmed by the authorities.
The OFB received about fifteen photos taken by a motorist in Indre-et-Loire and was able to attest to “the authenticity of the shots taken and the confirmation that the observed animal belongs to the gray wolf species”, according to France Bleu Touraine. Its presence in this department is a first for more than a century, when wolves had already been observed six times in other departments of the Center-Val-de-Loire region over the past three years.
“For us, this is no surprise”, explains the regional director of the OFB in Center-Val-de-Loire Jean-Noël Rieffel to franceinfo, because the wolves are more and more numerous – 624 in France according to the OFB – and that, “in favor of autumn, there are phenomena of dispersion of a certain number of individuals who are expelled from the pack”, because they are in some ways replaced by the Cubs, which grow up and take their place in the pack.
These wolves then roam “tens of kilometers. We know that the wolf can be found 1,500 km from its birthplace. We also know that the wolf can travel up to 50 km per day. So it is not surprising to see individuals disperse “, he adds.
But Jean-Noël Rieffel specifies that nothing proves for the moment that these wolves settled in Yvelines or in Indre-et-Loire because “there is no pack, there are no reports of attacks on herds” notably, “so at the moment it is too early to say if these individuals which have been observed will settle down”. He adds that it is even “very unlikely, if not likely at all” because the wolves seek to reproduce and return most often from where they come, in great majority towards the Alpine Arc which concentrates the main part of the packs of wolves in France.