This is a year that has started well. On January 1, Philippe and his partner went to stretch their legs along the Laïta, the Pouldu river which flows into Finistère. This amateur photographer is far from suspecting that he will cross paths with a particularly rare wild animal. While walking along the estuary, the couple spots a canine that looks suspiciously like a wolf. The place, “subject to the tides, is rich in vegetation and rugged, offering a beautiful diversity of habitats for wildlife”, according to enthusiasts from the “Groupe loup Bretagne”. “An extraordinary encounter,” the photographer confided to the group to whom he sent his photos.
A way for him to confirm that it was indeed a “canis lupus” and not a wolfdog or a husky. Because since the return of the wolf was made official in France and particularly in Brittany, testimonies have been arriving by the dozens. “We have people who think they see them everywhere,” an agent from the French Biodiversity Office recently told us. But Philippe’s observation was correct. The animal he encountered was indeed a wolf. A wolf who also knew how to swim, venturing without fear into the cold water of the Laïta, at the same time crossing the border between Finistère and Morbihan. Since this meeting, the photographer has been “in great demand” but has not wished to speak.
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-The formalization took time. And it was through the Morbihan prefecture that she intervened this week. “The animal presents all the morphological criteria of the gray wolf species and the observation is therefore validated.” According to state services, the famous wolf was seen on the land of the commune of Guidel, located west of Lorient.
It would be the same male individual observed several times for several years in Finistère. “It appears that the animal in question presents a set of characteristics (a phenotype) similar to another noted several times in Finistère. It would therefore be an individual already known,” assure the Breton specialists.
The difference between the images provided by Philippe and those previously provided by witnesses to the passage of the animal is that the amateur photographer’s photos are clear and clearly allow the animal to be identified. A “rare and very well documented” observation, according to the Brittany Wolf Group, which believes that this testimony “illustrates the movement capabilities of the species with an animal that does not hesitate to cross a watercourse of several dozen meters wide”.
Barely more than 1,000 wolves in France
There were just over 1,000 wolves in France in 2023, including only “three or four” in Brittany. A falling figure which seems to confirm the need to reduce “authorized shooting”, according to environmental associations. On the side of breeders, the presence of the predator crystallizes tensions while attacks on herds have increased slightly. The species has lost its status as a highly protected species in Europe.
