Episode 158: Europe’s Big Three – Wolves, Bears, Lynx. Part 1: The Wolf’s Uneasy Return to Germany

Summary

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Rewilding Earth Podcast – Episode 158 Summary

Europe’s Big Three – Wolves, Bears, Lynx

Part 1: The Wolf’s Uneasy Return to Germany
Date: October 24, 2025
Host: Jack Humphrey
Guest Contributors: Ilke Reinhardt, Rebecca Paetz, Lea Wirk, Stefan Kaska, local residents and others

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Overview

This episode launches a three-part series exploring the resurgence of Europe’s ‘big three’ carnivores: the wolf, bear, and lynx. In Part 1, producer Julius Purcell and host Jack Humphrey trace the dramatic return of wolves to Germany after their 150-year absence. The story unfolds in post-Cold War East Germany: deindustrialization, human depopulation, comprehensive EU nature protection laws, and new social divisions amid the wolf’s comeback. The wolf’s return becomes a case study in rewilding success and an example of cultural, political, and emotional contest over nature, rural life, and national identity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Remarkable Return of Wolves to Germany

• Historic Absence and Comeback
  • Wolves were eradicated from Germany in the mid-18th century (last shot circa 1741).
  • After reunification and EU protection (Habitats Directive, 1992), numbers surged from zero in 1990s to over 1600 today (06:39–07:13).
  • Saxony alone now has almost 40 packs (00:02–00:22; 07:35–07:48).
• Changing Landscapes and Opportunity
  • Collapse of East German industry led to depopulation; vacant lands became entry points for wildlife (06:39–07:24).
  • Wolves recolonized from Poland once anti-predator policies shifted.

“As East Germany started losing human population, it started to acquire a new wolf population. There are now nearly 40 packs in Saxony alone.” – Jack Humphrey (00:02)

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2. Wolves as Political and Cultural Symbols

• City vs. Countryside Divide
  • Wolves represent hope for some, but a threat to traditional rural life for others (07:35–08:17).
  • Used as a proxy in urban-rural and elite-ordinary people tensions.
• Wolves & Immigration Debate
  • The wolf’s return became entangled in debates about immigration and German identity, especially post-2015 refugee influx (“German versus foreigner” debate – 04:46–05:04).
• Right-Wing Narratives
  • AfD politician Carsten Hilse likens wolf reintroduction to an imposed experiment—echoing anti-migrant rhetoric (10:38–11:16).
  • Political “wolf politics” fueled by emotion, not fact (18:49–19:52).

“Sometimes you really can change the word migrant or wolf in the debate.” – Local Resident/Sheep Farmer (04:52)

“Right wing parties have used the wolf as a metaphor for the endangerment of the German way of life. ...to save German womanhood from both migrants and wolves.” – Rebecca Paetz (18:49)

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3. On-the-Ground Science: Studying and Living with Wolves

• Lupus Institute Fieldwork
  • Jack explores wolf territory with Lea Wirk of Lupus, an institute that monitors wolves and debunks myths (05:39–09:19).
  • Camera traps, scat analysis, and mapping wolf territories are core to understanding population growth.
    • Repeated emphasis on the importance of hard evidence vs. anecdote.
• Ecological Realities
  • High wolf density in Germany due to abundant prey compared to Sweden or Scandinavia (13:51–14:13).
  • Wolves “just live their lives”—not inherently a threat to people (14:13–14:18).

“If you see a wolf, you’re like, oh my God, what is he planning? What is he doing? And … it’s really strange that people see wolves so differently.” – Ilke Reinhardt (12:57)

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4. The EU Habitats Directive and Favourable Conservation Status

• Legislative Background
  • EU’s 1992 Habitats Directive underpinned wolf recovery.
  • Recent political pushback has led to downgrading wolf protection across Europe (20:48–21:32).
• Core Conservation Concepts
  • “Favourable conservation status” goes beyond numbers—requires broad, healthy, stable populations.
  • Critics oversimplify by focusing only on wolf counts.

“It just means that the animal or the species, they are really playing the ecological role that they should play in a very large area so that it’s really safe even in a hundred years.” – Ilke Reinhardt (21:53)

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5. Conflicts and Coexistence: Challenges and Solutions

• Livestock Losses
  • EU estimates wolves kill 48,000 sheep/goats yearly (0.07% of total stock) (23:25).
  • Compensation and fencing work, but quiet success receives little media attention.
• Symbol of Cultural Choices
  • The wolf is a litmus test: do people want to solve problems and adapt, or eradicate perceived obstacles? (24:18)
• Lessons from Poland
  • In Poland, wolf encounters generate less political heat and more pragmatic coexistence.
  • Surveyed rural opinions often neutral or positive, in contrast to heated German debate (26:53–27:41).

“For them it is understandable that wolves, they have like right to live and it’s not like struggle against them.” – Vavzenik (28:17)

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6. Hope and the Next Generation

• Changing Attitudes
  • Younger generations and some communities exhibit enthusiasm or pride in sharing landscapes with wolves.
  • Positive educational outreach, like Stefan Kaska’s programs for schoolchildren, are bridging understanding (29:38–31:11).
• Reframing the Narrative
  • Wolf is neither villain nor hero—just an animal reclaiming ecological space.

“My job is not to say only the positive things. My job is to give information that the people have a little bit knowledge and then they can think what they want about wolves. … He is not bad or good. He is an animal.” – Stefan Kaska (30:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Wolves as Political Symbols:
  “German versus foreigner. And sometimes you really can change the word migrant or wolf in the debate.” – Local Resident/Sheep Farmer (04:46–05:04)
• Habitat as Opportunity:
  “As East Germany started losing human population, it started to acquire a new wolf population.” – Jack Humphrey (00:02)
• Wolves in Populist Rhetoric:
  “The settlement of wolves and the migration crisis show many parallels. We see here a unique experiment to transform a mono ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi ethnic one.” – Carsten Hilse, paraphrased by Jack Humphrey (16:38–18:16)
• Scientific Perspective:
  “If you see a wolf, you’re like, oh my God, what is he planning? … It’s really strange that people see wolves so differently.” – Ilke Reinhardt (12:57)
• Ecological Belonging:
  “If you have roe deer and red deer and wild boar, you also need the wolf. It just belongs there.” – Ilke Reinhardt (23:03)
• A Culture of the Wild:
  “There’s more of a culture of the wild.” – Jack Humphrey (29:17)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Wolf Return: Historical/Political Framing (00:02–04:14)
• Field Research With Lupus Institute (05:31–10:15)
• Legislation and Conservation Status (13:29–15:41)
• Wolf & Immigration Politics (16:37–19:52)
• Debates over Livestock Losses and Real Ecological Impact (23:03–24:01)
• Contrasts in Polish Attitudes (25:02–27:41)
• Stefan Kaska’s Wolf Education Efforts (29:38–31:11)

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Conclusion

Germany’s wolf comeback, enabled by sweeping post-Cold War conservation policies, is a beacon of rewilding success, but it also catalyzes cultural and political conflict. Wolves have become avatars for deeper social anxieties over identity, rural decline, and Europe’s shifting values. Against this backdrop, a new generation—more informed, more open—seems poised to shape the future of coexistence.

The wolf’s uneasy return is both a test and a symbol: of what it takes to “rewild” not just land, but hearts and minds as well.

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Transcript

[Jack Humphrey]

As East Germany started losing human population, it started to acquire a new wolf population. There are now nearly 40 packs in Saxony alone. Think of the optics of a pack of wolves passing through an abandoned industrial site and you can understand why the wolf is so politically charged in Germany.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

It.

[Jack Humphrey]

Foreign.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. I'm your host, Jack Humphrey. One year ago today, I met producer Julius Purcell who pitched the possibility of a guest podcast episode on European Rewilding. What began as a story about bears returning to the French Pyrenees quickly evolved into a three part series on Europe's most charismatic predators. Wolves, bears and the Iberian lynx. In this three part series you'll hear the story of the remarkable comeback made possible by European nature policies after the Cold War. But this very success has strained coexistence in the countryside. Now with the rise of populist politics, decades of nature restoration are in retreat. Julius digs into the local stories. How wolves in Germany became entangled in the immigration debate. How French bears are caught in the centuries old agricultural opposition to the state. And how the Iberian lynx, saved from extinction as a national animal, now faces new resistance. This series tells a story of a continent whose consensus on nature is under strain. But it's also a story of hope, of a new generation that accepts these animals. Proving that where there is a will, there's a way to allow the wild to return. In part one, Julius explores one of Europe's most remarkable wildlife comebacks. Absent for around 150 years, wolves have made an impressive recovery. And their presence is now a testament to nature's resilience and to the efforts of people learning to live alongside them. But coexistence isn't always easy. As wolves reclaim their place in the landscape, new challenges and conflicts have emerged. In this episode, Julius looks at how Germany has adapted. What's been learned about sharing space with wolves, and why the success of the wolf's return is so important, even as the journey toward true coexistence continues.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

A long, long time ago, in a vast forest, there lived a young girl known as Das Roth. Caption Little Red Riding Hood.

[Rebecca Paetz]

The Saxon landscape is woods and forests. And if you if you head south from of Leipzig, along one of these parks, you come across a plaque and a stone monument to representing a wolf. And the plaque says in this location the last wolf has been shot in the year 1741 or so. And we could say that last wolf that was shot there is actually obsolete because the wolves have come back.

[Stefan Kaska]

In the mating season, the wolf packs start to Hole from the next forest. I'm from here. The area allows it. And I remember very well the time because. Because I'm 49 years old now and there was no wolves. The first wolf was here in the end of the 90s.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

I grew up here and I could not imagine that we would have wolves and wolves like this.

[Jack Humphrey]

In the last 30 years, Europe wide nature laws have put wolves, bears and lynx back into landscapes. In this episode, I'll be looking at how wild wolves in Germany have grown from a population of zero in the 1990s to over 1600 today. An amazing achievement. But Germany's recolonisation by the wolf has triggered a poisonous culture war. Rural versus city, ordinary people versus the supposed elite.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

So they are used as a city symbol to something, to a foreigner.

[Jack Humphrey]

German versus foreigner.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

And sometimes you really can change the word migrant or wolf in the debate.

[Jack Humphrey]

Bowing to these pressures, Europe is now downgrading its protection of wolves. We'll be hearing from rewilders about their consternation. But we'll also hear words of hope.

[Vavzenik]

Wolves are regrowing their population. We can live in some kind of coexistence. We don't need to fight them.

[Jack Humphrey]

And that even as Europe faces momentous political changes, respect for the wild and the wolf might endure.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Be careful.

[Lea Wirk]

I don't know how your insurance is, but be careful.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

And of course it's forbidden.

[Jack Humphrey]

I'm with Lea Wirk of Lupus, the German Institute for wolf monitoring and research. Lea's work with Lupus separates wolf facts from wolf fictions.

[Lea Wirk]

You can but be aware that it's the edge and there's only sand.

[Jack Humphrey]

So yeah, Lea's just brought us out to a former forest near the industrial city of Weisswasse in Saxony, near the border with Poland. Suddenly, a steep cliff drops away at our feet.

[Lea Wirk]

Don't jump.

[Jack Humphrey]

It's like something out of Tolkien, doesn't it? Stretching before us a vast exposed seam of coal. At its edges, miles away, power stations belch smoke.

[Lea Wirk]

Yet you only realize how huge it is when you see a car driving somewhere.

[Jack Humphrey]

So why has Leia brought us here? And what does this desolate landscape have to do with wolves? Well, let's go back a few decades when this land was run by the communist regime of East Germany.

[Lea Wirk]

That's all coal related.

[Jack Humphrey]

Its economy was built on heavy industry and open cast mining. Like this. The rivers ran red with toxic byproducts. Then, following the collapse of communism in 1989, the new government of reunified Germany saw an opportunity to clean the country up. Now this mine is still worked, but elsewhere, East Germany is full of abandoned mines and factories. The Eren rivers are cleaner now, but the change since 1989 has been traumatic. Unemployment rocketed. Young East Germans started to leave for other parts of Germany. As Lea explains, the population dropped.

[Lea Wirk]

Not much infrastructure in itself. And if you have a choice, you will move to Berlin, for example. Other areas.

[Jack Humphrey]

As a result of reunification, East Germany became a part of the European Union. And under European law, from the 90s, wolves arriving in reunified Germany from Poland were no longer shot. So as East Germany started losing human population, it started to acquire a new wolf population. There are now nearly 40 packs in Saxony alone. Think of the optics of a pack of wolves passing through an abandoned industrial site and. And you can understand why the wolf is so politically charged in Germany. To many, the wolf is a symbol of a cleaner, more hopeful world. But to many others, it's a symbol of East Germany's industrial decline, a symbol of threat to traditional rural life, destroying livestock, a symbol most of all of enrichment, invasion.

[Lea Wirk]

They mark every 200 meters with urine.

[Jack Humphrey]

So 20 minutes east of the mine, in a forest a stone's throw from Poland, there's ample evidence of the wolf's amazing comeback.

[Lea Wirk]

In this case, you can't see any claws anymore.

[Jack Humphrey]

The forest, Leia explains, is at the crossover between two wolf packs. So she's seeing lots of territorial markings and scratches.

[Lea Wirk]

Normally, if it's a fresh one, you have some claw marks in the scratching.

[Jack Humphrey]

Lea is an absolute connoisseur of wolfskat.

[Lea Wirk]

You start thinking about scat a lot, talking about it a lot, and they are so diverse.

[Jack Humphrey]

Lea can tell what the wolf's eaten just from looking at the hairs in the scat.

[Lea Wirk]

Soft and short hair and not the structure of red and rodeo. So it's something else. Maybe a hair itself or fox would be more reddish. Of course.

[Jack Humphrey]

Deep in the forest is lupus camera trap. It's time to see the evidence.

[Lea Wirk]

Control. The last one was on the 25th of February. Now two days later, nights later, there's the first wolf, just. Aha, there's another one, as you can see. Ah, there's another one. So it's a peg. So a peg is counted if there are more than two woods. Oh, and there's another one. So it's getting four.

[Jack Humphrey]

To those for whom rewilding offers glimmers of hope in a nature depleted world.

[Lea Wirk]

Ah, yet now it's five.

[Jack Humphrey]

This really is a joyous place to be. Amid the sigh of the pines and the spring bird song, not far from us, wolves have returned to these forests.

[Lea Wirk]

And 8, 9, 10.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

And a better.

[Jack Humphrey]

Such a view of course has powerful opposition. That's the voice of Carsten Hilse speaking in Germany's parliament. A lawmaker in the radical right wing Alternative for Germany or AfD party, Hilse is a staunch critic of Germany's wolf recolonisation program. Nobody asked us that they could carry out this wolf experiment. He's saying it's a large predator, a wolf, and it lives in sparsely populated areas. To bring it to a densely populated country like this is just not responsible. A few miles from the forest, Leah is now walking slowly down a busy main road.

[Lea Wirk]

The local living over there, she saw a scat in the morning and very fresh one stop. Maybe this one behind you? Yeah, that's the picture she showed me because I made a scrape the surface.

[Jack Humphrey]

Of the scat to collect genetic information. This may help her identify the wolf individual and get some sense of a change in his behavior or movement.

[Lea Wirk]

It's since 2021 that we have this pack with a lot of sightings.

[Jack Humphrey]

Not only the politician Carsten Hilse would say no doubt that finding Wolfskat by a busy main road where children pass on bikes would prove his point to him and other anti wolf politicians. It's just unnatural that wolves inhabit this populated landscape. Lupus headquarters is a house in a quiet village by the Spree, the river that 100 miles to the north will flow through the heart of Berlin. Lea and her colleagues desks are strewn with scat sample bottles and GPS collars. On a computer screen is a map of Saxony. Red rings on the map show wolf territories across the region. In the kitchen I meet Ilke Reinhardt and Gezer Kluft, co founders of Lupus and among the most distinguished wolf experts.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

In Europe dominated nature.

[Jack Humphrey]

They talk about how attitudes to wolves seem to derive from a need to control nature.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

Gezer something that people still feel today. You know, when they see a wolf they have this feeling that they can't control this animal, that this animal does what it wants. So this very strange thing, if you see a roe deer or a fox, then you think, wow, a nice piece of wilderness to watch. And if you see a wolf you're like, oh my God, what is he planning? What is he doing? And you know, it's really strange that people see wolves so differently.

[Jack Humphrey]

So I spell out Carsten Hills line that East Germany is not Yellowstone or Minnesota. There's dense population here, roads, crops, infrastructure. But as Ilke points out, cultural prejudices about wolves only being able to live in supposedly empty landscapes has nothing to do with the ecological reality of central Europe.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

So we often hear, wow, we have much more wolves in the area than they have in Sweden. I say, of course that's normal because we have more roe deer and more deer and and so on. So wolves have much more to eat in our area than they have in Sweden. So it's normal that our density is higher.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

They don't come back to Germany to do something bad to people. They just live their lives.

[Jack Humphrey]

The wolf population in Poland started growing in the 1980s.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

First they came back from the east of Poland.

[Jack Humphrey]

Lone wolves that ventured into communist East Germany. Then of course, still wolf free, did.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

Not last long, went into Germany, into that territory. They were shot. Then in the 80s. But then the legislation changed in all of Germany after the reunification. So in the 90s, some wolves came back.

[Jack Humphrey]

The legislation that Ilke is talking about is the European Union's Habitats Directive, a 1992 piece of legislation that sounds very dull, but has been the pillar of nature restoration across Europe for an entire generation. Thanks to the Habitats Directive, the grey wolf has enjoyed high levels of protection.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

Wolves from western Poland showed up here in the area in 2000 and had the first pups. It was the first possibility to spread. And in the first years the pack here reproduced. There could not be other packs because there was no possibility to mate with a foreign wolf for the daughters of this pack. So it took five years until the first daughter of the first pack could reproduce in Germany. And so the next pack was established.

[Jack Humphrey]

And from there this highly adaptable species took off in Germany. Its population rapidly expanded northwest to the border with Denmark. Swathes of Germany rewolfed. Amazing until its success became entangled in the political storm that is now rocking the country. In 2015, German leader Angela Merkel decided to admit a large number of refugees into Germany. Most were fleeing the brutal civil war in Syria. In the end, over 1 million refugees were admitted to Germany in 2015 alone. Merkel reminded sceptics of the idea that Germany was a strong country and uttered these now famous Wirschaffendass.

[Lea Wirk]

On bones.

[Jack Humphrey]

We'll handle it now. Many Germans think she did handle it. Some see what she did as an act of supreme moral leadership. But to many other Germans, it was reckless. While the vast majority of immigrants are law abiding, there have been acts of violence, some terror incidents and cases of young immigrant men sexually harassing women to Carsten Hills. AfD party hostility to the recolonisation of the wolf, at the behest of the globalist European Union and was already proving a vote winner in East Germany by the time he's making this 2018 speech. The threat of the invading wolf is directly compared to the threat for migrants. The settlement of wolves, he's saying, and the migration crisis show many parallels. We see here a unique experiment to transform a mono ethnic and monocultural democracy into a multi ethnic one. I ask you, who gave you the right to carry out this experiment on us? There are rapes, there are murders. I'm in Saxony's largest city, Leipzig.

[Rebecca Paetz]

I'm usually on time for my classes.

[Jack Humphrey]

I'm here to meet Rebecca Paetz, professor of political theory at the University of Leipzig.

[Rebecca Paetz]

What we saw after 1989, with the deindustrialization came depopulation, and with depopulation came renaturing.

[Jack Humphrey]

Rebecca's recent book is entitled the Wolves Are Coming Back.

[Rebecca Paetz]

So the wolves are coming back from the east.

[Jack Humphrey]

On this chilly March morning, walking briskly around Leipzig's Johannespark, Rebecca sums up the interlocking resentments behind what she calls Germany's wolf politics.

[Rebecca Paetz]

Right wing parties have used the wolf as a metaphor for the endangerment of the German way of life. The Syrian migrant is seen as predatorial towards German women. And it is the role of the AFD in these discourses to save German womanhood from both migrants and wolves. So what we call wolf politics works mainly on the basis of affects.

[Jack Humphrey]

Affects. Strong emotions are aroused through the telling of stories. The stories don't have to be based on truth.

[Rebecca Paetz]

Wolves do not naturally attack humans, just as the average Syrian does not attack the German population. These are all metaphors that play on a tune of fear. It's the Little Red Riding Hood narrative. It could happen. And those up there, or those in the west, or those who are into green politics don't care about us.

[Jack Humphrey]

Alas for the wolf, these political narratives, many of which are based on information that is distorted or outright false, are changing the European Union's long standing policy on wolf protection. A few weeks before I came to Germany to record the country had held federal elections, Carsten Hills AfD party became the second political force in the land. AfD's success in Europe's most powerful democracy has rattled the European Union. For 30 years, the European Union has championed and financed nature restoration across the continent. But it is now in retreat from those values.

[Rebecca Paetz]

And a lot of politicians, including at the EU level, are trying to anticipate that shift to the right by articulating policies that are less green, less Friendly to migrants and certainly less friendly to wolves.

[Jack Humphrey]

Remember the habitats directive, that 1992 law that protected the wolf? Well, it's now being watered down. The protection status of the wolf has now been lowered across the European Union, although member states can opt to keep the status as highly protected. Less protection for wolves now seems to be the new normal across Europe. Then there will be wolf culls. Lupus Geyser Klutz explains the importance of this change.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

For many years, it was very much that the European Union was being very stable with wolf conservation. They were like, no, do not panic. You get so much money. They never had this agenda to lower the protection status.

[Jack Humphrey]

So wolves are losing highly protected status, but they're still protected. Is that reassuring? Well, not if you believe that our best hope lies in rewilding. The EU's objective 30 years ago in the Habitats Directive was that the wolf attain what it calls favourable conservation status. Ilke Reinhard explains what that term means.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

It just means that the animal or the species, they are really playing the ecological role that they should play in a very large area so that it's really safe. Even in a hundred years, even with all climate change things that are going on, this species will be here in 100 years.

[Jack Humphrey]

For years, anti wolf groups have been arguing that the wolf has already attained favourable conservation status. But these arguments are based on a reductive idea of what that status means.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

Some of this interest group since years make pressure and say, we already have the favorable conservation status and they simply stick to the numbers. Say, oh, so many wolves, that's enough. And it's much, much more than just numbers. As I said, it's a range. It's the healthy of how healthy a population is. Like for instance, a population like in Scandinavia that's so heavily inbred that cannot be in favor of conservation status, even if you have a high number.

[Jack Humphrey]

And such a reductive idea misses the ecological point of restoring wolves to these landscapes.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

Geyser Kloot if you have roe deer and red deer and wild boar, you also need the wolf. It just belongs there. They all belong.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

They all belong here. Just a piece of the puzzle that belongs there. The roe deer and the deer and the wild boar are the way they are because they have evolved together with predators. So it's like they belong together.

[Jack Humphrey]

Now, of course, livestock farmers have a clear grievance. According to the European Union, wolves kill nearly 48,000 sheep and goats a year. That's about 0.07% of the total sheep and goat stock. Ilke and Gezer insist that subsidised measures to stop wolves from attacks on livestock, such as fences, do work. But neither media, nor the hunters, nor the far right politicians are interested in.

[Local Resident/Sheep Farmer]

Covering the success stories when you don't have damages and people living there with their sheep that have almost never damages.

[Jack Humphrey]

In the course of making this series, I come back to this binary view of the world time and time again. For those who don't like wildness, the problems are insurmountable. For those that want wildness back, they're problems that can fairly easily be solved.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

So the wolves are just a symbol. Do people in the society want to deal with these obstacles or not? Or do they want to kill them?

[Jack Humphrey]

It seems to be an issue of culture. And one thing that I'm hearing from Ilke Gezer and several other people that I talk to in Saxony is that there is a nearby culture that's more open to the wolf. It's after dark in late March. I'm in a rural guesthouse on the Polish side of the border. We're in the garden where my hosts have lit a fire. Some beers have just been opened and it's a good time to talk about wolves.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

Our neighbor's daughter, a few weeks ago she was in the forest alone.

[Jack Humphrey]

Alicia is an artist in her mid-20s. She grew up in a city in the north of Poland and is now living here in the middle of the forest.

[Ilke Reinhardt]

And she saw some huge wolf and she started shouting loudly and to scare the wolf. Have you seen a wolf? No, not really. But I know that Pavel seen a wolf few times.

[Pavel]

Yeah, I seen the wolf futurist as well. We was passing through the village about 10 at night. I didn't expect it's going to be big like this. I don't know how to describe it, really.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Impressed.

[Jack Humphrey]

Let's say Pawel's parents are in their late 60s. They've seen this great ecological change in Poland across their lifetimes. PAVEL TRANSLATES My mom grew up here.

[Pavel]

And she said before you just hear stories about wolves. Now you see wolves or, you know, lots of people who seen the wolves. So it's quite a lot of people meeting the wolves or wolves coming to the villages now, these days, on the.

[Jack Humphrey]

Edge of their village, they recently watched two wolves chasing a deer. The wolves ran off when they saw them. Pawel's mother says wolves make her uneasy. Pavel's father, though, sees it a bit differently.

[Pavel]

So he's afraid more of the white boars than the wolves. He says for him it's like you have these cartoons and stories about wolves all the time. And then you think they so scary. But he thinks it's not the case.

[Jack Humphrey]

Of course, the picture's mixed. Polish livestock farmers are often anti wolf. Many wolves are illegally shot in Poland. But a 2017 survey of rural people from six Polish regions show a majority of respondents stated neutral or positive attitudes towards wolves. Now, in Poland you hear the same gripes from rural people as in East Germany against the European Union, against elites and falling standards of living. But wolves don't seem to stoke that much political heat. A little down the valley from Pavel's homestead, we find positive enthusiasm.

[Vavzenik]

You know, I think that for a lot of people who are living in that area, they are very proud of having those wolves.

[Jack Humphrey]

Vavzenik, in his 40s, is a psychologist from Warsaw, now living with his partner in a house deep in this forest.

[Vavzenik]

That it is so wide and that there is not so many places that you may meet wolf in person.

[Jack Humphrey]

In the course of making this series, a pattern keeps emerging. In places where predators have maintained a baseline, albeit low. Be they wolves, bears or lynx, people are more prepared to share their lives with them despite the inconveniences. It becomes part of that rural culture.

[Vavzenik]

So education works very well because everyone are told to keep their dogs in like safe spaces, not like outside, because it is understandable that wolves may come and take them. And people wasn't annoyed about wolves, but annoyed by someone who hasn't closed the canal because they know that it's in their nature. So because people who are living here, they live close to the nature. For them it is understandable that wolves, they have like right to live and it's not like struggle against them.

[Stefan Kaska]

In West Poland they are more connected with nature a little bit. I don't know why.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

There'S more of.

[Jack Humphrey]

A culture of the wild.

[Rebecca Paetz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Humphrey]

I think back on the German side of the border, Stefan Kaska is trying to bring some of that more easygoing wolf culture into the lives of young Germans. Stefan first fell in love with wolves at the age of 12, when Germany still had no wild wolves.

[Stefan Kaska]

The people who hate the wolves make more noise here. For example, we have around 40 packs, wolf packs in Saxony. And a wolf pack needs one animal, like a big sheep for a day. And if the wolf eats every day a sheep, the wolf pack, we have 17,000 killed sheep, but we have 516,500 sheep are not killed. We have more sheep in Saxony then since 2016. The wolves are growing and the sheeps too. And a lot of people say okay, you can't have livestock animals because wolf will eat everything. But it's not true.

[Jack Humphrey]

He's about to give a talk to German school kids at a community center.

[Stefan Kaska]

He has Stefan I think my job is not to say only the positive things. My job is to give information that the people have a little bit knowledge and then they can think what they want about wolves. Not so like look to the wolf. It's a good animal or something. He is not bad or good. He is an animal. He's in nature around not only in the forest and it's easy to shot him but it's not easy to live together.

[Jack Humphrey]

Stefan introduces the kids to his Alsatian Anima and takes us all out into the woods.

[Stefan Kaska]

Animaehatz Wursteinplatz.

[Jack Humphrey]

Showing how Anima uses her amazing sense of smell and and tracking skills, he compares her instincts with those of her close cousins the wolves. The kids love it. Now there's an irony in that anti wolf rhetoric taps into the Red Riding Hood myth to suggest that wolves are a threat to children. And yet an entire generation of children have grown up in East Germany with wolves in their landscapes and the world didn't end. Some of these children may even shape a future Germany that can learn to value and esteem its wolves and the wildness that they represent across East Germany. As spring takes hold, the new wolf pups will start to be born. By the winter after next, they'll be young adults forming new packs extending the tread of the wolf through these forests that, except for a brief parenthesis of little more than two centuries, have for hundreds of thousands of years been their home.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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