Basque Country is an autonomous region of northern Spain situated between Cantabrian range and Pyrenees. This region is a highly humanized territory of SW Europe but still has some interesting ecological sites. Basque Country region´s role is important because it’s a connectivity gap between Pyrenees and Cantabrian range. Furthermore, 21% of the Basque territory is protected under 2000 European Nature Net, where wolves also occur.

However, Basque Country has not populations of large predators because of the human persecution. Wolves were extirpated until their extinction in the XX century, but since the late 80´s, northwestern Iberian wolves had been trying to establish there naturally. Since the 90´s, few wolf breeding attempts occurred in the Basque Country but many wolves include this area as dispersal range. Nevertheless, many wolves died by poachers or at hunting drives.

This specie is the only terrestrial apex predator that can reach naturally the Basque Country, without human intervention. According to the biological carrying capacity and official reports, it´s estimated that more than nine breeding packs could potentially occurr in the Basque Country. But Basque government policy had been always to cull all wolves because the conflict with non tradionational extensive farming raising activities that doesn´t include the care of the livestock. The wolves doesn´t suppose any real problem for the huge extensive numbers of livestock that are free roam at the public lands (more than 24 heads / km2 in southern Basque Country, where wolves mostly inhabit). Although the Basque administration has full competences on the management of wildlife at regional level, no effective policy rules had been applied to reach wolf conservation goals. This lack of effectiveness led us to demand to the Basque Government to fulfill regional environmental laws. So, our petition is to include the wolf in the Basque Red List Book of Threatened species. This fact could mean the full protection of the specie by law, and consequently, the aproval of a wolf recovery plan for the Basque Country.

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