The return of the wolf: a Swiss identity crisis

Scrambling up the stony slopes of a Swiss Alpine hillside just before midnight, Jean-Marc Landry is on a mission. Guard dogs bark as we climb over a low, electrified fence. Landry’s head torch shows the way through the dark, lighting up the startled eyes of sheep spread out across the large pen. Above us, grey mountain peaks block out the moonlight.

This is wolf territory. One was spotted nearby three days earlier. The sheep are spending the night below the Culan, a mountain in the canton of Vaud, high above the Swiss Rhône valley. Landry, a Swiss biologist and wolf expert, is checking on the guard dogs — three large white Great Pyrenees — who live among the sheep, tasked with defending them against intruders.

As we approach, the dogs scatter, their barks indicating alarm. Once they have calmed down, they are fitted with GPS collars by Landry and his assistant. For centuries, sheep and wolves have been natural enemies. The nocturnal patterns of these guard dogs will be tracked for evidence of them leaving the enclosure to repel wolf attacks. But Landry has a more ambitious mission than just improving the way the sheep are protected. He hopes to bring about the seemingly impossible: a peace that would allow wolves to coexist with their prey in Switzerland’s landscapes.

Wolves are returning across Europe. A combination of protective legislation, human migration into cities and the rise of the “rewilding” movement over the past few decades has helped the species regain ground. At the continent’s centre, Switzerland has watched tensions escalate between farmers and environmentalists in neighbouring countries, and is now braced for packs of wolves to spread across its own mountainous terrain.

Around us, the night is alive with the dogs barking and sheep bleating and the clanging of bells around the latter’s necks. This time, the night passes uneventfully; the GPS collars will later show the dogs remained with the sheep. But as the number of wolves in the area is increasing, so is disquiet over the returning predators. The issue is opening up a broader debate about humans’ role in determining who lives — and who dies — in natural landscapes, and what it means to reintroduce large carnivores into the countryside, where they were once hunted to near-extinction. More specifically, it taps into a deeper conflict within Switzerland’s national psyche, between what many view as the ideal of a traditional pastoral life and the reality of managing animal populations alongside sometimes contradictory environmental priorities.

Landry believes the behaviour of wolves — as well as that of humans — can be changed before it is too late. Last year he set up a not-for-profit foundation in Switzerland to help “open minds” to the idea of wolves coexisting with traditional agriculture and “to show people that we can find a new way”, he says. “Is that really possible?” I ask before our night trip. “Yes, I’m sure,” he replies. “Our way of thinking is very different to anything you have seen before.”

***

By the end of the 19th century, wolves had been eradicated from much of Europe. Lacking enough hoofed animals (such as deer) as prey, they increasingly attacked livestock, only to be shot, poisoned or trapped by humans. Pressure from environmentalists for their return increased in the wake of Europe’s 1960s social revolutions. The argument grew that humans had a responsibility to protect the diversity of flora and fauna, and animals such as wolves were a part of a balanced, sustainable ecosystem. Switzerland oversaw the signing of an international treaty in 1979 — the Bern Convention — on the protection of wildlife and habitats, including wolves.

Today, there are at least 10,000 wolves across Europe — some say the number could be as high as 25,000. The largest populations are in the Carpathian mountains in central and eastern Europe, and the Dinaric mountains in the Balkans. As new generations of wolves are born, and expand their geographical range (they can travel hundreds of miles), numbers are rising in places where they have not been seen for decades — Germany, France, the Netherlands and Italy. The first wolf returning to Switzerland was spotted in the southern canton of Valais in 1995. For now, the Swiss population size remains small — last year about 30 animals, and three packs, were identified wandering the remotest parts of the country — but it is growing fast.

Like most Europeans, the Swiss grow up on the tales of the Brothers Grimm, including Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf. Some 20 per cent of the population believe wolves could attack humans, according to a Zurich University poll. In fact, the evidence suggests such attacks only happen in extreme situations, usually when animals are rabid. “Humans are not on the menu plan of wolves,” says Reinhard Schnidrig, head of wildlife and forest biodiversity at the federal environment office in Bern.

In France and other countries, emotions also run high. Two years ago, angry French farmers held the bosses of the Vanoise national park hostage overnight to demand action on attacks on livestock. Yet the return of the wolf poses a particular challenge to Swiss national identity. “It’s an incredible animal. It puts its paws on a lot of issues and is about much more than biology,” says Schnidrig. “It’s also a social issue; it confronts us with our history, how we farm and govern our land.”

Much of what being “Swiss” means — and the image its tourism industry promotes — has its roots in the idealised pastoral life captured on chocolate boxes and in the 19th-century Heidi stories of Johanna Spyri, which rank among the country’s literary classics. “The beautiful Alps; tending cows and sheep on the pastures — that’s the image,” says Elisa Frank, an ethnologist at Zurich University studying the social impact of wolves on Switzerland. “The Alps are sensitive terrain — socially, culturally as well as environmentally. It’s a very Swiss thing.”

The image of wolves may be improving, however. Two years ago, the Swiss Christmas hit film Schellen Ursli (“Little Mountain Boy”) showed a wolf befriending the film’s child hero. In another milestone, the Gampel open-air pop music festival in Valais last year adopted the wolf as its logo. Nikolaus Heinzer, another ethnologist at Zurich University, points out that this highlighted a generational divide. “If it had been a yodel festival, they wouldn’t have done this — it was mainly for young people.”

***

For many living and working in rural parts of Switzerland, the return of the wolf is a nightmare. A few weeks before my nocturnal expedition with Landry, I meet Georges Schnydrig, 55, who tends about 40 sheep of the local Blacknose variety in pastures above Lalden, a small village in Valais. The sun is falling behind the snow-covered Alpine peaks, casting long shadows across the grass as we climb to where his animals are waiting. The sheep — long-haired with black patches, some looking almost coiffed — recognise him, or at least the bucket of food he carries. They rush towards us, bleating loudly. Schnydrig greets them affectionately, muttering in Swiss-German. “To think a wolf could destroy this way of life,” he says, turning to me.

Two years ago, Schnydrig helped form the Association for Valais Without Large Predators, a campaign for the eradication of bears and lynx as well as wolves. He lost a pregnant ewe to a wolf attack five years ago. To him the threat is existential — to the way of life in Swiss rural regions. The steep valleys of Valais — home of Sepp Blatter, the disgraced former Fifa president, and Gianni Infantino, his successor — are a rural idyll with a carefully ordered social and physical infrastructure. Schnydrig’s fields are kept lush by sprinklers linked by underground pipes. Breeders prize sheep according to gait and markings. Schnydrig has a full-time job at a local energy company, and adds his voice to the yodelling club. But tending sheep is more than a source of additional income and fresh meat. “It’s a question of our culture — it’s part of our lives. The whole family is involved,” he says.

While government funding helps cover the cost of electric fences, their construction adds to his workload and may not necessarily be effective: I reckon a determined wolf could easily jump the four-strand fences around his pastures. “On the Alps and valleys the land is steep and stony — it is just not possible to put fences everywhere,” Schnydrig says. Nor are guard dogs seen as the solution. “If every small agricultural holding with 20 or 30 sheep had to have one or more guard dogs, we would have a huge number of dogs causing all sorts of problems in the spring and autumn grazing as well as the winter. They are not cuddly animals. In cities and urban areas, the view is clear — ‘it’s great to have predators back; they are good for nature,’” he says, in reference to the arguments made by rewilding proponents. “Such statements show people have bad consciences about nature because in the city you can’t do much about the environment. They are far away from the mountain regions. They don’t understand agriculture.”

Valais attracted national headlines after sufficient signatures were collected for a referendum on driving wolves back out of the canton. A vote could be held next year. The campaign president is Guido Walker, a politician in the cantonal parliament who works for SBB, the rail operator, in nearby Brig. He takes me by cable car up to see the Aletsch glacier, 2,600m above sea level, where winter skiers and summer hikers enjoy views across to the Matterhorn.

Tourism forms a large part of the local economy and relies, he says, on preserving the panorama of wooden chalets and neatly kept pastures. “We’re at the beginning of mass breeding by wolves. It’s the job of politicians to look to the future. The problem is not having five or 10 or 30 or 40 wolves. The problem will be when they are here en masse. We will have lost control.”

Without sheep and cows, the Alps would turn “to wilderness”, he fears. A few days after we meet, Walker emails a link to a Wikipedia page listing reported incidents in which wolves attacked humans. “The fact is, wolves are dangerous,” he writes. “It is for good reason that wolves in four Swiss animal parks are kept strictly well apart from visitors.”

***

Such views are familiar to Landry, who has spent more than two decades studying wolves. He traces his fascination with the species — and its troubled relationship with humans — to watching as a child the 1972 French film La Tuile à loups, in which a wolf terrorises a village. He grew up in the Jura region, where he liked to be alone, tracking chamois (goat-antelope creatures native to the area) in the surrounding mountains — leaving him with a lifelong ability to scramble up difficult hillside terrain.

Landry studied biology at Neuchâtel University, spending part of his studies observing chamois. Then, in 1993, he went to Spain to observe wolves. “This was my dream. I arrived in the field and within 45 minutes I had seen my first wolf.” The same year he also travelled to watch wolves in Georgia, just as the country was in the midst of a violent civil war. “It was not a good idea. I came back very quickly,” he says.

In Switzerland he has worked on government research projects into wolves, focusing much of his time on studying how they behave. He likes to put himself in their position, pointing out that they lived for thousands of years in proximity to humans, and that domesticated wolves became dogs. What, I ask, is the difference between a wolf and a dog? “Try to pet a wolf and you will see,” he says.

Landry spends much of his time in France, where the wolf population is better established and the sheep flocks are larger. In the pastures of the canton of Vaud, 1,800m above sea level, dotted with yellow gentian flowers and smelling of wild garlic, Landry is able to test some of his ideas for allowing wolves to coexist with sheep in Switzerland.

Before night falls, he catches up with local farmer Jean-Pierre Vittoni, known as Peppone, with whom he works on breeding and training guard dogs. Dressed in a blue boiler suit, his face ruddy from days in the sun, Vittoni has more than 300 sheep, and a shepherd who watches the flock by day.

One strand of Landry’s thinking is about improving defences. Guard dogs here could wander further from the sheep flocks, creating a sort of buffer zone that wolves will fear entering. But he also believes wolves could be taught that attacking sheep is dangerous. He is experimenting with “deterrent collars” worn by sheep, using similar techniques to self-defence pepper sprays. Another idea he is testing is whether wolf attacks can be detected before they take place — and nearby shepherds alerted — by attaching heart monitors to the sheep; their heartbeat rises sharply when they are alarmed.

As part of his strategy to reduce attacks, particularly aggressive wolves could also be culled, Landry says, almost like a reverse selective breeding programme. Since 1998, 10 of the animals have been shot legally in Switzerland. But Landry would like a more scientific approach to deciding which are destroyed — the risk of killing a pack leader, for example, is that the remaining wolves become more disruptive. “Maybe we should increase our knowledge of wolf attacks to kill the right wolf, and in the medium to long term change the wolves’ behaviour,” he suggests.

All the ideas sound good in theory but in practice there are obstacles. The guard dogs have to be trained to repel wolves while not becoming a menace themselves in landscapes populated by humans. In France, Landry admits, there is widespread opposition to using guard dogs in landscapes shared with hikers or cyclists. Vittoni imagines similar problems in Switzerland. “It is not easy when several dogs come together — people can be afraid and react accordingly,” he says.

We watch as Vittoni uses Border collie sheepdogs — which keep their distance from the larger guard dogs — to herd the sheep slowly down the hillside to their overnight pen. Vittoni has worked with sheep all his life. I ask if it is possible they can coexist with wolves. He is uncertain. “Switzerland is a really small country but if the wolf comes back, we will deal with it,” he says finally. Can Swiss politicians find a solution? “It depends what you call a solution.”

***

The Swiss political debate about wolves mirrors a broader one about the country’s relationship with the rest of the world. Famously neutral, Switzerland can be insular — it has steadfastly refused to join the EU, for instance. Foreigners make up a quarter of the population, yet the country’s most popular political party, the Swiss People’s party (SVP), campaigns to cancel agreements with the EU on the free movement of people. At times, the unease over the encroaching wolves seems to echo a separate discussion about immigration and the integration of “foreigners”. In appearance, posters for the campaign to expel wolves from Valais are uncannily similar to SVP election material.

“Culturally, the wolf has become more important. It is as if we’re debating more and more of our identity through this animal,” says Heinzer at Zurich University. “It’s very emotional — I’m struck by the antagonism . . . There has been a radicalisation.”

The Swiss government is discussing changing the law to give more discretion to officials to take preventive action, by culling wolves that threaten damage. But it is based on the assumption that Swiss politicians can find a compromise that allows wolves to live among mountain people, whereas some would like to all but banish them.

“We do have a pragmatic way. We can find a consensus within our own country because we are not part of the EU. We’re quite independent in deciding our own law and ordinance,” says Schnidrig at the environment ministry in Bern. “We ask African countries to protect elephants. It can’t be that as a rich western country we are unable to cope with wolves returning and killing some sheep.”

Environmentalists argue wolves belong in Switzerland. “They are part of our ecosystem,” says Laura Schmid, regional director for conservation charity WWF in Valais. “They keep in check the population of ungulates [such as chamois]. The forests are healthier and you have greater biodiversity in areas where you have wolves.”

“The big question is, how much do we want to compromise?” says Gabriele Cozzi, a biological and environmental studies researcher at Zurich University. “There are about 200,000 sheep in Switzerland. About 200-300 are killed by wolves each year. Is this too many or can we live with these losses? What can we do and what do we want to do to reduce losses? But we also lose sheep because of lightning, disease, because they fall off cliffs.”

In the short term at least, Switzerland’s system of direct democracy — with ordinary voters exercising ultimate sovereignty through referendums — makes political discussions more heated and the task of finding solutions more complicated. But ultimately, it does at least have a track record of producing consensus decisions that last. “We have the debate and a vote, and then it’s done,” says Schmid.

***

As we talk in the darkness on the Vaud hillside, Landry seems disappointed the guard dogs retreated as we arrived instead of trying to repel us, as intruders. But he is philosophical. “Wolves and dogs understand each other better,” he says. “If we had been a wolf, they would have approached. A wolf would have thought twice before attacking.” Guard dogs pose unquantifiable risks for wolves, he explains. “They don’t know what will happen.”

Landry is an intermediary in the best style of Swiss diplomats. He has immersed himself in wolf behaviour, and researches their interactions with dogs and humans. But in Switzerland he spends much of his time building trust with local farmers and shepherds. “You can’t behave like a biologist,” he tells me.

The return of wolves has raised questions of how territory can be shared, conflict situations avoided and political consensus reached — classic tasks of diplomats. “You always have two extremes — either you are for or against wolves. I never wanted to be one or the other,” Landry says. “I like pastoral farming — it’s part of my childhood — but at the same time I like wolves and predators. My aim is to find a solution so we can have both.”

Ralph Atkins is the FT’s Switzerland and Austria correspondent

Photographs: Salvatore Vitale