Now What? The Conundrum of Successful Recovery of Wolves and Other Species for European Conservation

Abstract

The recent decision to downlist the wolf from a “strictly protected” to “protected” status in the Bern Convention and Habitats Directive marks a turning point for European conservation. While reflecting wolves' recovery, the shift has illuminated a conundrum within existing conservation frameworks: No species has ever been downlisted before, despite a remarkable wildlife comeback over recent decades. Moreover, the downlisting has been fiercely resisted and framed as a reversal of conservation progress. Yet evidence suggests that wolves can thrive under more flexible management regimes, and that pragmatism from all sides is needed to foster ecologically sound and socially sustainable coexistence. We argue that the rigidity of current frameworks is undermining social legitimacy and the development of adaptive management strategies suitable for recovering wildlife in anthropogenic landscapes. European conservation policy and debates needs to evolve beyond the emergency modality toward addressing the distributive and procedural challenges of coexistence, including effective cost redistribution, transboundary management approaches, and inclusive articulation of visions for coexistence in different places. The policy shift for wolves should not be treated as a crisis, but as a call to reconfigure European conservation to accommodate success and recovery, and its sociopolitical complexities.