Unexpected discovery in the West.
First taken for a dog, a wolf corpse was found in mid-October on the side of a road in Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, in Loire-Atlantique, a first for nearly a century in this department. .
The body was found Friday, October 15 by the department's road maintenance services on the edge of the RD 213.
The corpse was taken to a veterinarian to be identified by its tattoo or chip, before being transferred to the premises of the technical services of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins.
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On October 20, an employee of the technical services sent photos of the animal to a member of the Breton mammalogical group (GMB), then transmitted to the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), “which confirmed that it was 'acted well of a gray wolf of the species Canis lupus lupus ”, according to the prefecture.
The animal was recovered by the Wolf network of the OFB "for additional analyzes to determine the origin of the individual and the causes of his death", according to the same source.
"The presence of the wolf in Loire-Atlantique is a first for nearly a century", underlines the prefecture.
A wolf was photographed by a photo trap device on May 14 in Jard-sur-mer, on the Vendée coast, about 120 km south of Saint-Brévin-les-Pins.
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Considered to be eradicated in 1937 at the national level, the wolf reappeared in the Mercantour park (Alpes-Maritimes) in 1992. The population of this protected species is today estimated between 414 and 834 individuals, with a presence detected in regions as distant as the Pyrenees, Lorraine, Burgundy, or the Somme, and finally as far as Normandy and in the Center-Val-de-Loire, according to Ouest-France.
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Any suspicious sighting of a large canine, predation on wild animals or suspicion of damage to domestic livestock must be promptly reported to the competent departmental service of
the OFB.
