The body of the animal was found on Tuesday, January 17, near a departmental road between the seaside resort and Montpellier.
SourceAFP
© Stephanie Para / MAXPPP / PHOTOPQR/THE MOUNTAIN/MAXPPP
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UA 36 kg male wolf was found dead on Tuesday morning, the victim of a collision with a vehicle near the seaside resort of Grande-Motte (Hérault), on the Mediterranean coast, the prefecture of ‘Herault. This animal, “in good physical shape” before being hit by an unidentified vehicle, was discovered along a departmental road, between the Etang de l’Or and the entrance to this town created in the middle of the 1960s near Montpellier. However, wolves are not usually present on the shores of the Mediterranean.
“The departmental council, road manager, recovered the remains to entrust it to the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB), which carried out the analyses. The autopsy revealed numerous fractures related to a collision with a vehicle,” the statement said. “A genetic analysis will also be carried out in order to identify whether it is an animal previously observed elsewhere in France”, specified the prefecture.
More than 1,000 wolves in France?
The gray wolf, which returned to France on its own from Italy, has experienced favorable demographic dynamics for 10 years and the OFB estimates that its population in France could even have exceeded 1,000 individuals. It is mainly found in the Alps (east), but also in the Massif Central (center), the Pyrenees (south-west) or the Vosges (north-east). His presence regularly opposes animal defenders to breeders, who denounce attacks against herds of sheep and goats. The Hérault prefecture calls on the motorist involved in this collision to make themselves known to the authorities, in order to establish more precisely the circumstances of the accident in La Grande-Motte.
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