Wolves return to hunt in German forests

A pack of wolves has formed in Germany for the first time in 150 years - the result of a heady mix of political and legal change, and the outcome of a doomed relationship.

Delegates to a conference held earlier this month by the state authorities in Saxony were told that at least six animals were now hunting together in forests close to the Polish border.

Gesa Kluth, a biologist who has been discreetly following the progress of the wolves for several years, said her fellow Germans had reacted with astonishment to the news.

"For most people, the idea that a pack of wolves is living free in such a heavily industrialised, densely populated Western European country as Germany ... well, they just don't get it together in their heads," said Ms Kluth, whose work is sponsored by the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

The wolf occupies a uniquely sinister place in the German psyche. "I don't think there's a single child in Germany who grows up without hearing Little Red Riding Hood and the other Grimm tales that feature wolves. I remember as a child that I, too, was afraid of wolves," Ms Kluth said.

Yet growing environmental consciousness seems to have transformed public attitudes. Ms Kluth said people living around the Muskauer heath, where the pack has its home, were "relaxed and even proud".

Very occasionally, individual male wolves have been entering Germany from Poland since the second world war. But while some got as far as the Lüneberg heath in northern Germany, most died in the formerly communist east.

Until 1990, when the laws of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) were swept away at the time of reunification, its citizens were not just allowed, but actually obliged, to kill any wolf they saw. Similar laws existed in Poland and large numbers of wolves were shot in the period immediately before they were revoked.

"We know that a female was shot in 1994 in the forest in Poland just over the border from where the pack is living now," Ms Kluth said. "My personal belief is that the male who started it all was her mate and that he escaped into Germany afterwards."

When he was joined by a female is unknown. But in November 2000 they were spotted by a forester with two young. He judged the young had been born the previous spring. Since then, there has been a further litter of at least two.