Nathalie Espuno, Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, C.N.R.S., 1919 route de Mende, BP 5051, 34033 Montpellier Cedex 1, France

Extensive sheep breeding is an important activity in the Mercantour mountains, where 85,000 animals graze each summer on the high-altitude pastures. When the wolf recolonized the area in the early 1990's, the predator encountered large herds of sheep (up to 2500 head), spread over wide expanses of pastures, and often left unattended. Sheep losses to wolves have occured regularly since 1993, and the yearly number of depredations has been steadily going up as wolves were expanding numerically and geographically. The mean number of wolf attacks per herd per summer increased from 1994 to 1996, and stabilized in 1996-97. Depredations were often focused on a small percentage of the herds, and 90 percent of the attacks occured at night.

As part of a program providing against wolf-livestock conflicts, wolf-killed domestic ungulates have been compensated since 1993-94, and breeders have been offered financial and technical support for setting up prevention measures : guarding dogs (often Great Pyrenees), enclosures (usually portable electric fences, which confine the sheep in a restricted area but are not predator-proof), and assistant shepherds. The purpose of this study was to quantify the relationships between wolf predation on livestock and herd management practices in the Mercantour area.

The 1994-97 records of wolf depredations were provided by the Direction Departementale de l'Agriculture et de la Foret, and included informations on the date, location, management practices and prevention measures used by the shepherds. Data on non-attacked herds were obtained from Mercantour National Park and Groupement d'Interet Economique Faune Sauvage de France - LIFE program. The relationships of the number of wolf attacks per herd per summer with the location, year, herd size and husbandry methods were investigated using Multiple Correspondance Analysis and Generalized Linear Modeling.

The number of wolf attacks per herd per summer appeared strongly correlated with herd size. Significantly lower number of attacks occured when guarding dogs were present, and a weak negative correlation was detected between the number of attacks and the number of dogs. The confinement of herds at night was related to lower numbers of attacks. No effect of the presence of a shepherd during the daytime was detected. As reported in other studies, the combination of guarding dogs and confinement of the sheep herd at night appears to be an efficient way of preventing depredations in Mercantour. Those relationships will be further investigated as more recent informations become available and uncertainties in the data are reduced.