Standing in hand like shepherds, Sophie and Geoffroy inspect the nets of a sheep park on a steep slope of the Baronnies massif, a daily and voluntary mission to “mark their presence” and “prevent the wolf from returning”.
The two Bretons monitor the herd of Nathalie Welker, breeder of a hundred sheep and goats in the Drôme Provençale, where the presence of the predator is marked and the attacks on recurring sheep, an additional “pressure” on her profession.
“The wolf is there, you have to do with it, so find parades,” said the 57-year-old breeder, long braid pepper and salt and “peasant and proud to be”, observing his dry and wild valley bathed in light.
However “the best prevention” against attacks, “it is human presence”, assures the one who “has lived with the wolf for almost 20 years”.
With two herds to watch, including one at altitude, and without means of paying a shepherd, the breeder turned three years ago to Pastoraloup, a device overseen by the association for the protection of large ferus predators, which sends formed volunteers to support the breeders.
And thus allow Nathalie “to sleep at night and to be much less stressed”, but also to meet people and share her job.
The system is gaining ground: 35 breeders participate this year in the Alps, Jura and Brittany, against around twenty in 2023.
– “Difficulty of too much” –
Sophie Morice-Couteau, 45, and Geoffroy Galliot, 48, are among the 63 new volunteers formed last summer for one-week missions per breeding.
“I am in solidarity with the wolf, but I am in solidarity with the breeder” for whom the predator is sometimes “the difficulty of too much”, confides Sophie, who came to “put her hands in the heap” and “get out of this image of the eco -friendly which makes the lesson to others”.
Behind this bucolic landscape perched at 1,000 m altitude overlooking the Alps, the wolf droppings found a few hundred meters from the herd and the videos of the photographic traps showing the canids along the nets, playing and marking their territory, “stress” Nathalie.
She fears the “big attacks”, especially in the fall, when young wolves learn to hunt. In October 2023, 17 of his animals were killed by an attack after the impromptu departure of a volunteer who left the herd unattended.
Like Sophie and Geoffroy, many of the 189 volunteers formed “realize their responsibilities, the need to be there”, but others “do not really know what awaits them”, notes the breeder.
At sunset, the two volunteers return to fifty animals, meticulously counted, in an electrified night park 1.40 m high.
– “Not there to debate”-
Once the valley is plunged into darkness and rocked by the crickets and the sheep bells, Sophie, frontal on her head, makes a last turn before going to bed in her teepee posed a few meters.
“It’s the night”, alone with the herd, “that we understand his role”, she slips. But “the wolf has no time: from the moment it has an opportunity, it goes”.
Passionate about animals, this cinema mediator “believes” for cohabitation between man and the predator, but admits to seeing only a “complicated” extract “of a breeder. The canine, she would like to see him “far from the herd”, fearing this face-to-face that several volunteers have already lived, or worse, an attack.
The volunteer says he now understands “the violence that some breeders can sometimes have vis-à-vis the wolf”.
This violence is reflected in “very strong social pressure” on those who call upon pastoraloup and slows down others to benefit from it, regrets the breeder Nathalie Welker, because the device is “ecological labeled”.
“We are not at all there to debate, but to help,” insists Sophie.
In the early morning, sheep and goats, full, are impatient that she and Geoffroy release them in their day park. Soon, other volunteers will ensure this relay task until the end of October.
The two friends will help them help another breeder in the Mercantour.
The European Union recently declared the wolf of “strictly protected” species “to” protected “, thus facilitating the shots on the predator despite the protests of defenders of biodiversity. For 2025, the state authorized the 192 slaughter of 1,013 wolves deducted from French territory.