After centuries of near-extinction, Europe's wolves have made a remarkable comeback. Over the past decade, wolf populations have surged by nearly 60%, with more than 21,500 wolves recorded across the continent in 2022. Countries including Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Romania each now host over 1,000 wolves, a rare conservation success story for a large predator reclaiming human-dominated landscapes.
In Denmark, the recovery has been more modest but no less significant. Wolves disappeared from Danish forests in 1813, hunted to extinction and remembered only in folklore. In 2012, a lone male crossed from Germany into Jutland, and by 2017 the country celebrated its first confirmed breeding pack in over 200 years. Today, Denmark's population stands at just over 40 wolves, with at least seven breeding pairs producing cubs. Yet even this small number has ignited fierce debate over livestock safety and public policy in one of Europe's most intensively farmed nations.
The European Union recently downgraded wolf protection from “strictly protected” to “protected”, easing member states' ability to authorise culling. This spring, the Danish government announced that “problem wolves” could be legally shot if they repeatedly enter towns or attack livestock behind secure fencing. The first licence to shoot a wolf cited for several attacks was issued in September. Conservationists fear this could lead to quotas like those in Sweden, and note that mysteriously high mortality rates may already reflect illegal hunting.
A YouGov survey conducted this summer asked Danes: “Do you agree that breeding wolf packs are beneficial for Danish nature?” Of 2,172 respondents, 43% disagreed, 30% agreed, and 27% were neutral or unsure. Support varied sharply along political lines: nearly 45% of left-leaning and green party voters agreed wolves are good for nature, while almost half of right-wing voters fully disagreed. Even centre-left Social Democrat voters leaned toward disagreement, showing how wolf reintroduction has become entangled in traditional political divides.
Age proved the strongest predictor of attitude. Over 50% of young Danes aged 18–34 supported wolves, but support declined steadily with age, with nearly 60% of those over 73 expressing outright disagreement. Researchers noted they had never seen such stark age differences in their studies. While conservationists hail wolves as a keystone species—citing Yellowstone National Park as an example where reintroduced wolves allowed forests to recover—critics argue that Denmark's patchwork of farms, towns and highways is no Yellowstone, and that the real-world costs of coexistence remain contentious.
