When the country’s leading wolf researchers recently took a close look at 13 encounters between wolves and people around Oksbøl in western Jutland, they arrived at a conclusion: It was a single young wolf displaying troubling behavior, approaching people in different places, following them and coming within a few yards of them. The wolf had presumably lost its natural wariness because it had been fed.

In a memo, the researchers concluded that the wolf did not pose a danger to people, but they also wrote that if the authorities wanted to take action against the protected animal in the area, they should target this one problem wolf. Potentially by scaring it off and teaching it that humans are dangerous. Or, as a last resort, by having the wolf shot. The approach behavior was thus »driven by a single individual«, they wrote.