In Search of the Shadow Wolf: Beginning the Hunt

When my journey began to reintroduce the beaver to Britain and I undertook many European trips to view the rich waterworlds they create, wolves were a nothing. They did not exist in most of the landscapes I visited a quarter of a century ago.

I recall a field trip to the Netherlands with an agricultural college in Hampshire to look at an engineering project near Nijmegen.

As we viewed the steel-grey konik ponies and black Galloway cattle contentedly grazing, I asked the project manager accompanying us if, as part of his ambitious rewilding agenda, he would ever consider reintroducing predators.

I recall he laughed before saying no and stating it was his belief that, as more green bridges covered with trees linked to river corridors were built or other landscapes were recovered for nature, in time wolves would arrive of their own volition.

History of the Shadow Wolf

As the nearest wolf population was nearly a thousand kilometres away in the military ranges of Saxony, I dismissed this assumption as fanciful.

When several years later a young wolf was killed on a motorway equidistant from the Dutch border and its east German birthplace, it still seemed far-fetched that, long after the last was killed in 1869, they could recolonise the Netherlands.

Now, of course, they have and, despite several road deaths and a number of illegal killings, in 2023 there are believed to be nine packs – wolf pairs that have borne cubs – seven of which, plus a scattering of single wolves, are living without great issue in the sprawling pine forests of the central Veluwe.

Making A Comeback