A wolf, legally slaughtered in September in the town of Val d'Ajol (Vosges), was identified for the first time in France as coming from a lineage from Central Europe and the Baltic, announced on Wednesday February 24. French Biodiversity Office (OFB) in a press release.
Read also: These places in France where the wolf makes an unexpected reappearance
The genetic analysis of the remains showed "
a signature typical of the wolf populations of Central Europe and the Baltic and not of the Franco-Italian strain historically present on French territory since the beginning of the 1990s
", explained the 'OFB.
Analysis techniques have enabled biologists to retrace the life history of this wolf, whose predatory behavior "
particularly important
" led the French authorities to issue a shooting license in order to kill it.
It was taken while chasing cattle on the night of September 22 to 23, 2020 in the Vosges, says the OFB.
According to the research of biologists, this wolf, first identified from a sample of excrement on January 1, 2020, was born in 2019 in the Herzlake pack in Lower Saxony (Germany) near Meppen.
Over the months, he migrated through the Netherlands, Belgium, the German-Luxembourg border in Rhineland-Palatinate (Germany) before arriving in France in the Vosges and Haute-Saône.
During its journey, the animal claimed many lives, including more than 50 sheep in the Netherlands.
He was also hit by a van in Belgium but this incident did not seem to affect him, according to the OFB.