On January 7, the prefect of Aude signed the decree delimiting for the 433 municipalities of the department the zones of eligibility for the measure to protect herds against wolf predation for the year 2025. With a vast revision of the 2024 card, justified by the sheep attacks for which the responsibility of the wolf has not been ruled out.
What do circles 1, 2 and 3 mean?
On January 7, 2025, the prefect of Aude signed the prefectural decree defining the areas of eligibility for the measure to protect herds against wolf predation. A decree including list of municipalities and map of Aude to define circles 1, 2 or 3 (C1, C2, C3). Rankings which, in addition to defining the degree of access to aid, are determined by the reality of wolf pressure. In C1 are the municipalities in which predation is proven, with, during each of the last two years, at least one attack for which the responsibility of the wolf has not been ruled out; but also the communes which are the subject of a regular presence of the wolf, the villages enclosed between C1 communes, or bordering communes which share a pastoral coherence. For C2, place the areas where “preventive actions (purchase and maintenance of guard dogs, fences, editor’s note) are necessary and taken care of, due to the possible occurrence of predation”. Finally, the C3 covers all other municipalities in the department, in application of a 2019 ministerial decree, to “anticipate the arrival of the wolf”with aid dedicated to the acquisition of dogs.
Between 2024 and 2025, a disrupted map
30 municipalities in C1 in 2024, 12 in 2025; 41 municipalities in C2 last year, 71 in 2025, with 18 municipalities moving from C1 and C2, 20 municipalities remaining in C2, and 33 new arrivals; and therefore 350 municipalities in C3, compared to 362 last year. A total upheaval which, specifies the Aude prefecture, “takes into account the attacks identified by the “wolf not removed” conclusion and pastoral entities”.
For an attack to give rise to compensation, the findings made by the French Biodiversity Office (OFB) and the expertise of the Departmental Directorate of Territories and the Sea (DDTM) must lead to this conclusion of ” wolf not removed” (LNE): a name chosen by recalling that “its mode of predation is not exclusive to this species” and that “Dogs can adopt sometimes very similar methods of hunting and killing prey”.
The conclusion “undetermined origin”, in the case where the clues and criteria noted at the location of the damage do not make it possible to distinguish whether the damage is due to predation, an accident or natural death, may, “exceptional way” and in a “context of high predation risk”give rise to compensation “for the benefit of the doubt”.
-Predation moving west
The wolf has been in Aude for more than 10 years. With a presence noted for the first time in 2014 in the Razès sector, even if, “for three years, very few clues have been collected on this historic sector”state services specify.
Since 2021, another sector of presence, “the least”appeared in the Montagne Noire, and concerns three departments (Aude, Tarn, Hérault). The year 2024 finally saw the “shift of predations towards the west of the Black Mountain”in parallel with “the emergence of indications of presence in the Lauragais sector and southern Toulouse”.
Certainty: Aude today has two zones of permanent presence (ZPP) of the wolf, the Montagne Noire and the Madres-Boucheville massif, classification conditioned by the presence of at least two indices over two consecutive winters. No ZPP yet in Lauragais, however. But since December, several clues have been under study in the municipalities of Alzonne and Barbaira… “without it being possible to characterize an effective presence of the wolf”.
15 attacks with the conclusion “wolf not removed” at the end of 2024
As of December 13, 2024, 28 attack reports were processed in Aude; 15 resulted in a finding of wolf not ruled out. In detail, 12 files in Lauragais (for 10 LNE); six in the Black Mountain; four on the Piège and the Razès (2 LNE); two in Haute Vallée (2 LNE); and finally four in the rest of the department (1 LNE). Since the end of 2024, eight other cases have been registered in Aragon, Labécède-Lauragais (two attacks), Barbaira, Bouriège, Saissac and Villarzel-du-Razès: cases currently under investigation. In 2023, the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes regional prefecture, national coordinator of the wolf plan, put the number of reports for compensation or under investigation at 12, with 39 sheep killed; in 2022, 18 cases and 103 victims were recorded. At the end of 2022, according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, 55,500 sheep and 3,900 goats made up Aude's livestock.
