Description

Wolves are returning to Europe... and it’s stirring up powerful emotions! Can we learn to coexist with predators in a human-dominated landscape? 🐺🌾

In this #REWIND episode of the Deep Seed Podcast, we revisit a powerful moment with Willemijn de Iong from Commonland. Willemijn shares her insights on the return of wolves in the Netherlands, the conflict with sheep farmers, and what we can learn from human-wildlife conflict in Kenya.

This conversation dives into:

✅ How wolves are changing ecosystems in real time (trophic cascades)

✅ The emotional and cultural tensions with rewilding

✅ Compensation and policy solutions for coexistence

✅ What Maasai communities in Kenya taught her about respect, conflict, and change

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🎙️ Originally aired: January 21, 2025 Watch the full original episode here - https://youtu.be/slUPVmg-e20

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This episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital, a company accelerating the transition to regenerative agriculture by financially rewarding farmers who improve soil health and biodiversity 💚 www.soilcapital.com

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Now in the Netherlands, just going back here, we have the wolf coming back naturally. So sheep farmers need to be supported in protecting their animals, either through subsidies or funding or compensation. And we need to culturally get used to the fact that there are like, yeah, big, large mammals like wolves coming back that are affecting our ecosystems in a positive way, but also in a very crowded country.

• Speaker #1

  Welcome back to The Deep Seed. In our previous Rewind episode, I revisited my conversation with Willemijn de Jong from Commonland, and I selected a passage about regenerative agriculture in the Netherlands in particular. And as I was listening back to this conversation, another passage really caught my attention, and that's why I decided to make a second Rewind episode from it. This time we talk about human versus wildlife conflicts. and In particular, the issues around wolves coming back to our ecosystems in Europe. Now I say issues, but if you speak to ecologists, for example, they will tell you how amazing they are for our ecosystems and how beneficial they are for biodiversity and for so many reasons. But if you speak to other people, like some farmers, they will point out all of the problems and damages that they cause for them. So... That creates a lot of conflicts. And this is exactly what we're going to be talking about in this passage. This is a very short rewind episode, but I definitely recommend going back and listening to the full conversation with Willemijn. As per usual, this episode was made in partnership with Soil Capital. I'm your host, Raphael, and this is the Deep Seed Podcast.

• Speaker #0

  So back in the day when I was still a student, I did research on a human-wildlife conflict in the south of Kenya. Of course, that's a, yeah, how do you say, it's more an example far away from home, because we're talking about lions, hyenas, elephants that are not really common in Europe. So for me, that was a big shift, even though my father has been active in conservation for a long time. Problem there, as an example, was that you had a national park where all these wild animals can freely live without boundaries. So the animals can get in and out of the park freely. But you also have Maasai communities living around the park, which is their ancient ancestral lands. And they have cows and sheep and goats. And so they're, of course, a nomadic tribe and they herd animals. animals and Uh, so at night these lions could go out of the park and then attack their cattle. And so that would be a human wildlife conflict. They can also attack people of course, sometimes. And, um, the conflict arose around how do you compensate for the value that's being lost because the cattle is basically the bank account of the community. Um, and the national park management wants these tourists to keep coming. But the local community around the park doesn't really see the benefits of it economically. So they mostly see wild animals eating their cattle and them losing a lot of their income. And so they've been experimenting with a compensation scheme. So when your cow, for example, was killed by a lion, you would get compensated for the amount of the value worth of the cow. And then in return, the question to community would be, can you refrain from killing the lion? Because traditionally in the Maasai community, lion killing was part of becoming a man, so the warrior, becoming a warrior in the community. And so it's also about culture change and also about valuing local community and their traditions while allowing them to benefit from these tourists that keep coming. So I was trying to understand the perspective of the local community as to why they were killing the lions. not just from a traditional practice, but also as a kind of political protest. So if the park management doesn't listen to us, then we'll kill these wild animals to get their attention, right? That was kind of the conflict they were in. And in the end, the composition scheme worked really well, but it does require a lot of time and conversation to create this culture change and value the local community, and the local community in return respects the animals. and um they have this deep cultural respect from their own culture already. I mean, the way they respected the lion was amazing, but it was also part of their culture to kind of kill the lion and become a warrior. So I was like trying to understand that conflict. Now in the Netherlands, just going back here, we have the wolf coming back naturally. And there's a lot of conflict arising with sheep farmers. that are really struggling because, well, we also see a lot of wild dogs or dogs not being trained well. Let's put it that way. We don't have a lot of wild dogs in the Netherlands, but dogs not being trained well, killing sheep. But also the wolf is killing sheep. And so now we're mixing that all up in one big bowl of anger. And so sheep farmers need to be supported in protecting their animals, either through subsidies or funding or compensation. And we need to culturally get used to the fact that there are like, yeah, big, large mammals like wolves coming back that are affecting our ecosystems in a positive way. But also in a very crowded country with a lot of infrastructure, cars, houses, cities, towns. So, yeah, it's fascinating to observe how we, yeah, how it also polarizes the discussion. You're either for or against, you know, there's no middle ground kind of.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, difficult conversations to have, right?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, and actually, yeah, we're expanding our home as humans and our presence on earth, but these animals were there before we came, you know? So how do we respect each other's houses?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, and the case of the wolf is creating a lot of debates in Europe at the moment. What are the benefits of wolves in natural ecosystems? and...

• Speaker #0

  There's this famous story about how... How Wolves Change Rivers. It's a very famous story. If you go to YouTube and look it up, How Wolves Change Rivers, it's an amazing story of how in science it's called the trophic cascade. So if the wolf comes back, the behavior of the grazing animals like deer starts to change. So they start to graze differently. Their grazing patterns change. So in the Yellowstone National Park in America, they reintroduced wolves. The animal behavior of the grazers changed, thereby allowing, especially at the waterways, the river sides, because they didn't want to be openly vulnerable to the wolves. So then the little trees and the shrubs, they had some time to actually grow without being eaten by the deer. That then changed or brought a more favorable habitat for the beaver. That then changed the water flow. So you have all these kinds of like effects ecologically because of the reintroduction of a keystone species. And in the Netherlands even, what I've observed in a documentary that was made on this is when pine trees that are falling over all across Europe now because of the climate change, the deer are less likely to graze in between these fallen trees because they don't have a sight line. They can't see properly because the wolf is now here they want to see properly so that they don't graze in between these fallen trees and then these small baby trees have actually some time to grow so you have loaf trees or like broadleaf trees now actually regrowing in the netherlands so it's already having an ecological effect um next to a highly social conflict effect um but i'd be curious to see how this changes over time.

• Speaker #1

  But the social... conflict effect is one that in the case of the Maasai community could be resolved with money, with compensation. And respect, yeah. Yeah, and respect. In the case here of the wharf wouldn't be kind of the same thing. We know now that this kind of restoration has value and that the wharf alone without us needing to do anything is contributing to massive restoration that has a lot of economic value could we not decide to then have a budget decide to compensate farmers or people who who suffer losses that's it yeah so the beavers and wolves and all these animals they do work for us they create healthy ecosystems that we benefit from so

• Speaker #0

  i think our national budget should include allowing for these animals to live here and then compensating for any damage that comes with it of course it needs to be managed in a way. And you have a European protocol for how you deal with wolves that become tame or dangerous. And you need to take that very seriously because otherwise the public support will go down massively. So of course you need some kind of management system. If a wolf becomes dangerous, you need to take measures. So I'm fully, fully for that. And at the same time, Can we, yeah, readjust our policies and procedures and management techniques to allow for this while having a public debate and creating cultural change around the fact that, yeah, if you walk around the national park here, yeah, there are wolves. And even for me, like when I walk around now, it's like, oh. So it's like, yeah. And I also recognize their feces now. And so it's like, okay, so there are wolves here. And it takes time to get used to that again.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. Yeah. I understand that.

• Speaker #0

  That takes time and conversations, public debates.

• Speaker #1

  So here we go. This was a very short passage and I kind of feel like this topic deserves a full length episode, maybe in the next season of The Deep Seed. So if you have any suggestions about who would be a top expert to interview on this particular topic. please let me know in the comment section or send me a message on social media, on LinkedIn or Instagram. Generally speaking, I love to get messages and feedback because I spend a lot of time alone at home in front of my computer, researching, mixing, editing, preparing these episodes. And all I see is numbers on the screen, you know, the number of people who are listening to the podcast. and I'm I sometimes lack human connection, and that's why I love to get these messages and feedback. I'll see you very soon for the next Rewind episode. In the meantime, I wish you a beautiful day, a happy life. Take care.