In the pre-dawn darkness of Sierra de la Culebra, Zamora, Spain, a sudden howl pierces the cold. More join in, until the baying chorus echoes all around. As the sky begins to lighten, their shapes emerge: first the alpha male, and then the rest of the wolf pack, appearing in the twilight where light and darkness merge.
In Europe, this large carnivore was hunted for centuries and almost exterminated, surviving only in inaccessible or sparsely populated areas. Now, thanks to changing attitudes and increased protection, Europe’s wolf population is slowly recovering, and the apex predators are gradually returning to their former territories.
Spain – where Iberian wolves had dwindled to just 200-500 individuals by the 1970s – now has the highest concentration on the continent. As the animals return, however, the age-old conflict between shepherds and wolves has intensified.
For the communities that live and tend animals in proximity to wolves, their return provokes a range of emotions, from fear to euphoria, and conflicts between humans and wolves are quick to resurface. In the pastoral settlements in the hills of northern Spain, shepherds are trying new strategies in an effort to coexist with these large carnivores.
Fernando Rodríguez Tábara arrives on horseback wearing a wide-brimmed hat, at his home in Cerdillo, a village with just four registered inhabitants. Rodríguez Tábara knows a lot about the struggle for coexistence with wolves. At 22 years old, he already manages a farm inherited from his parents with more than 100 cows in one of the most densely populated wolf areas in Europe, the Sanabria area in Zamora.
Tonight, however, he will leave his precious livestock to sleep without fear of wolves. His secret? His “army” of dogs, as he calls them: 13 mastiffs that guard the cattle. “Now, I sleep soundly,” he says, smiling.
His mother, Luisa Tábara, tells us that it wasn’t always like this. “In 2012, wolves killed 12 calves, it was a tragedy. For me, my cows are part of my family,” she says. It was at that point, Rodríguez Tábara says, that some neighbours gave them mastiff puppies to raise alongside the cows and defend them against wolves. “My father told me it was impossible,” he says.
Today, Rodríguez Tábara rides back to the mountains on his mare, Canela. The calves have started to be born, and the mastiffs never leave their side. “We put them in the stable with the calves from a young age, and in the end, they feel like part of the herd,” he says. “We realised that with the mastiffs, the problem is eradicated.”
The temperature drops as evening falls near the Picos de Europa national park. The rocky silhouette of Espigüete peak stands out against a starry sky, as thousands of sheep make their way to the pen that Juan Díez has just set up. A transhumant shepherd, Díez started working with livestock at a very young age, following his grandfather in Extremadura. At the age of 17, he had his own flock and moved to Asturias. “That’s where I really got to know the wolf – because that summer it killed 121 of my animals,” he says. “Of course, I was an inexperienced kid.”
Díez came from an area where the wolf had disappeared a long time before, along with traditional practices to prevent their damage. Later, he returned to León, near to the region where he had lost his animals, walking from Extremadura with more than 500 goats. But this time, he was prepared: the dogs he brought with him were mastiffs.
“That year, they didn’t touch a single one,” Díez says. When the livestock is in an electric fencing enclosure or gathered with the dogs, “the wolf won’t get to them”, he says. Asked about the conflict between shepherds and wolves, he says: “Why did the dog enter the church? Because the door was open.”
The recovery of wolf populations in Spain has taken decades. In the 1970s, with the wolf on the brink of extinction, naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente began campaigning to save the creatures. His work, along with that of other organisations, contributed to a significant change in mentality. The Iberian wolf went from being legal to hunt at any time to having the time and method of hunting regulated. In the 1990s, the wolf began to reappear timidly in places where it had long disappeared. Since 2021, a law has prohibited its hunting. Over the past year, however, the recovery of Iberian wolves has again become politicised in Spain, with right wing parties campaigning ahead of elections in July on the promise to make it legal to hunt them once more.
Prevention-focused methods to control the wolves can result in a significant reduction in the number of dead or injured livestock: up to 61% in the case of mastiffs, 99.9% with electric fences, and 100% for fixed enclosures, according to WWF citing research by European project Coex.
Sofía González Berdasco grew up as a transhumant shepherd in northern Spain, between the mountains of the Somiedo natural park in Asturias and the pastures of Santa Marina on the coast. Every night as a child, she went to sleep to stories like those of Little Red Riding Hood, but “they weren’t stories, they were real-life experiences”, she says. González Berdasco’s mother would send her young daughters to watch over the goats in the mountains because there were wolves. One summer’s day, while González Berdasco was tending the livestock, a wolf approached. She was five years old, and it was the first time she had seen one face to face. She saw it take one of the kids and disappear. “For us, our animals are like our family, and when a wolf comes and kills one of them, it hurts,” she says. “You still don’t have the idea of, well, the wolves killed a calf because they have to feed their pups, just like I love my kids.”
Over time, González Berdasco discovered the importance of the role of large carnivores in the ecosystem, and decided she had to break the mental barrier: her fear of wolves. She ventured into the hills alone to spend the night in her sleeping bag in an area where she knew the wolves were. “I came back transformed; I conquered the last step, the most complicated one – the one in my soul,” she says.
González Berdasco admits that sometimes she feels as if she is in a no man’s land, understanding the needs of shepherds and the wolf packs they live alongside. She now guides tourist groups with her company, Somiedo Experience. “Working with tourists, I see some who think that if the farmers here disappeared, the wolves could live, and that we, the people from the villages, are superfluous,” González Berdasco says. “And then I listen to many farmers who say that all the wolves should be killed, and it will be better for us. I don’t see that one side is more right than the other.”
She believes that the only possibility for reaching an understanding is to sit down and negotiate. “Neither side can lose everything, and the other side gain everything.”
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