Beyond 2000 Symposium

Program

Conflicts Between Wolves and Humans - Thursday Session

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Beyond 2000:
Realities of Global Wolf Restoration

23-26 February 2000
Duluth, Minnesota USA

Wolves, dogs, livestock depredation and compensation costs: 25 years of Italian experience

Paolo Ciucci, Luigi Boitani, Department of Animal and Human Biology, Universite di Roma "La Sapienza", Viale dell'Universite 32, 00185 Rome, Italy

Although compensation programs for livestock depredations have been officially approved by Italian Regions since the 1970's, their costs have never been quantified nor monitored through time at the local, regional or national scale. However, given the increase in wolf numbers and range over these past 25 years, wolf-livestock interactions changed drastically and, correspondingly, compensation programs have recently been challenged due to their alleged dramatic increase. As part of a European Union Life-project for wolf conservation, we quantified compensation costs at the national scale for the years 1991-95, correlated them to the increasing wolf population, and carried out a comparative analysis of the compensation programs adopted by each Regional government.

Compensation costs, in the order of US $2,000,000 each year, appear to be the highest among European countries. However, a large portion of the wolf population is still illegally killed each year and social conflicts do not seem to be sedated by compensation. Regional differences in compensation costs do not reflect differences in wolf numbers and distribution, nor differences in livestock density. Husbandry techniques, presence of free-ranging dogs and structure of the compensation programs all appear to influence compensation costs to some extent. Even though amount of money spent to compensate depredations by wolves is still negligible if compared to that paid to farmers to compensate wild boar damages to agricoltural crops, their recent increase calls for a revision of both their aims and their structure. This is especially true in the light of the ongoing increase of wolves in Italy and, in particular, in marginal and human-dominated areas. Whereas other models of compensation ought to be explored, the structure of existing compensation programs (e.g. certification of alleged damages, percentage and conditions of payment, etc.) need to be radically revised and integrated into a more complex conflict-resolution strategy.