Posted on 07/28/2011 11:07:33 AM PDT by decimon
A bloody, stinking sheep's carcass greets shepherd Yves Vignon as he walks to check on his flock on the foggy Alpine heights. It's the 17th of his ewes to be savaged in a month.
The mountains over Grenoble were once an ideal grazing ground for his 900 sheep. But now, after long banishment, the wolves are back -- bolder and hungrier than ever.
"We came to this spot on June 24. A week later we were attacked" by wolves, Vignon, 62, told AFP. It was the first of at least four attacks over the past month.
"Every morning when I get up, I wonder what I am going to find on the spot where the sheep have spent the night," he says. "I'm not here to feed those wolves!"
Wolves were eradicated in France in the 1930s, but made a comeback in the southern Alps in 1992, crossing from Italy. They have spread through eastern France, first to the Savoy and this year to the Vosges and Doubs regions.
The predators have also appeared in the Pyrenees and in the heart of France in the Massif Central mountain range, but the government says these far-flung wolves also originate from the Italian pack.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
They like Fox.
St. Francis made a deal with a wolf to save a village. Couldn’t the French just lay out some cheese?
There are deer in France, as well as boar, but sheep are easier pickings - there are more of them, for one, and they are a herd animal, so when a wolf has found them, he's found more than one, and can pick out the easiest target from a large selection. Also, imagine which would win a race, a sheep or a deer? Deer are wild, born so, and the attributes that keep them alive long enough to produce fawns are valuable genes - something that has been bred out of many domesticated animals, often because those same attributes that keep wild animals alive, are what make domesticated animals unruly, difficult to manage.
Easy prey.
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