Large carnivores

The Commission has initiated a range of measures to conserve large carnivores in the EU. The recovery of large carnivores in the EU also contributes to the objectives of the European Green Deal’s EU biodiversity strategy for 2030. This is the EU’s plan to put biodiversity on the path to recovery by 2030. It contains specific commitments and actions to protect nature and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, building on existing nature laws.

In the EU

6 Large carnivore species are present in Europe: Brown bear (Ursus arctos), Wolf (Canis lupus), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), the highly threatened Iberian lynx (Lynx pardina), Wolverine (Gulo gulo) and Golden jackal (Canis aureus).

All mainland EU countries host at least one large carnivore species.

To ensure the conservation of a wide range of rare, threatened or endemic animal and plant species, the Habitats Directive requires Member States to establish a system of strict protection, prohibiting namely deliberate killing, capture or disturbance of species in the wild, as well as the deterioration or destruction of their breeding sites or resting places. Under Article 16, the Habitats Directive allows for derogations to this system of strict protection, under certain conditions. Derogations should always be used as a last resort. Read this summary guidance document for more information.

In August 2024, the Nature Restoration Regulation entered into force, complementing the Habitats Directive. As a key element of the European Green Deal and the EU Biodiversity Strategy, the regulation sets binding targets to restore degraded ecosystems on land and sea with binding restoration targets for specific habitats and habitats for species to allow that the ecological requirements of a species listed in Annex II, IV or V of the Habitats Directive are met at any stage of its biological cycle so that it is maintaining itself on a long-term basis as to reach or maintain a favourable conservation status. 

Large carnivore populations across Europe

Large carnivores have made a remarkable comeback in Europe during the last half century, which is a recognised conservation success made possible by protective legislation, more favourable public attitudes and habitat improvements. Having a common understanding of the distribution and size of their populations in Europe is therefore important to make decisions regarding their conservation and management. 

Large carnivore distribution maps and population updates 2017 – 2022/23 provides the best available overview of brown bear (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx), wolf (Canis lupus), golden jackal (Canis aureus), and wolverine (Gulo gulo) distributions and population sizes at a continental scale. 

While the recovery of large carnivores can be viewed as a success, it has also resulted in the resurgence of conflicts with some stakeholders. This is mainly because large carnivores, in particular wolves, after an absence of decades (or longer) have returned to some parts of Europe, where the knowledge and the practices of living with them had been lost. This concerns, in particular (but not only) livestock predation in the areas where shepherding or other traditional systems to manage and protect livestock had been abandoned. 

In response, and to support implementation of the Habitats Directive on the ground, the Commission has for many years been carrying out a range of measures to encourage and facilitate dialogue and cooperation between stakeholders and to promote best practices on coexistence. In this spirit, in 2014 and 2018 the European Commission supported the establishment of two types of dialogue platforms to promote ways and find solutions to minimize conflicts between human interests and the presence of large carnivores:

• EU Platform on Coexistence between People and Large Carnivores
• Regional Platforms on People and Large Carnivores

Information on the establishment of regional and local platforms are summarised in this toolkit.

As committed to in its response to the European Parliament Resolution of 24 November 2022 on the protection of livestock farming and large carnivores in Europe, the Commission published on 20 December 2023 an in-depth analysis on the situation of the wolf in the EU.

The In-depth analysis on the situation of the wolf in the EU shows that the populations of the wolf have significantly increased in the last two decades. There are today more than 20,000 wolves in the EU with generally increasing populations and expanding ranges across all mainland EU Member States with breeding packs in 23 EU Member States. This is a conservation success, made possible by the protective legislation, more favourable public attitudes and habitat improvements. The continued expansion has in parallel led to increasing conflicts with human activities, notably concerning livestock damages caused by the wolf. Depredation has reached important levels, affecting more and more regions, both within EU Member States and non-EU Bern Contracting Parties.

In order to reflect this new situation, on 20 December 2023 the Commission tabled a proposal for a Council Decision to adapt the protection status of the wolf under the under the international Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, to which the EU and its Member States are parties. Following the formal approval by the Member States on 26 September 2024, the Commission, on behalf of the EU, tabled the amendment proposal to the Secretariat of the Bern Convention in view of the Standing Committee meeting of December 2024. Any future decision to lower the protection status of the wolf in the EU legislation will be subject to the outcome of the Standing Committee Meeting of the Bern Convention. Once the amendment of the appendices of the Bern Convention enters into force (3 months after adoption), the Commission will be able to table a proposal to modify accordingly the regime of the wolf under the EU Habitats Directive.

The Commission started in April 2023 to collect data from expert groups and key stakeholders, as well as the data reported by national authorities under the existing EU and international legislation.  On 4 September 2023, the Commission launched a new phase of the data collection. A summary of the findings of the targeted data collection is included in the in-depth analysis.

To support Member States and other stakeholders, the Commission issued Guidance on the strict protection of animal species in 2021 inter alia by offering information and advice on how to address conflicts between strictly protected species and human activities. A dedicated Annex on the wolf has been included in the guidance.

The EU also supports Member States in ensuring coexistence with large carnivores through the available financial instruments, such as LIFE, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EARDF) or the European Regional Development Fund Interreg instrument.

Since 1992 the LIFE programme funded more than 170 projects dealing with large carnivores. You can find an overview of large carnivore-related LIFE projects here.

• EU proposal to adapt the protection status of the wolf adopted by Bern Convention - European Commission
• The situation of the wolf (Canis lupus) in the EU: an in-depth analysis
• Commission proposes to change international status of wolves from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’ based on new data on increased populations and impacts (Press release 20/12/2023)
• Questions and answers on changing the protection status of the wolf under the Bern Convention (Q&A)
• Proposal for a Council Decision for amendment of Appendix II and Appendix III of the Convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats (Bern Convention) with respect to the wolf (Canis lupus)
• Large carnivore distribution maps and population updates 2017-2022/23
• Habitats Directive: Guidance on protected species
• Letter Commissioners Sinkevicius and Wojciechowski to EU Environment and Agriculture Ministers on Guidance Document

Other specialist information sources

There are several specialist groups working on the topic of large carnivores as well as newsletters updating about the latest developments.

• The Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe (IUCN /SSC specialist group) has released their own LCIE Guidelines for Population Level Management Plans for Large Carnivores.

• The IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group has published the following:

   Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence

  Technical report: Key actions for Large Carnivore populations in Europe

• Carnivore Damage Prevention News is a newsletter addressing the challenges as well as the opportunities of coexisting with large carnivores by sharing knowledge of the broad range of existing adaptation strategies.
• The EU Large Carnivore Platform sends out its biannual newsletter informing about relevant policy developments, general news as well as events related to the topic of large carnivores.

Subscribe to the EU Large Carnivore Platform newsletter here!