Interactions between wolves and livestock in France: Understanding the effects of lethal management through different modeling approaches

The return of wolves to France since the mid-1990s has led to a resurgence of attacks by this predator on livestock, particularly sheep. To prevent losses, the French government has authorized the culling of wolves under certain conditions for the past fifteen years. The use of this management measure has increased over the past seven years and has sparked considerable controversy. Here, I will present an overview of the modeling work I have been conducting for several years on this topic in an effort to answer the following questions: Is this tool effective in reducing the risk of attacks? What effects do culls have on the dynamics of wolf recolonization? And on the stability of packs? On the agenda: individual-based modeling, kernel density estimation in collaboration with Thomas Opitz during my Ph.D., and more recently, a dynamic multi-state occupancy model and network analyses that I have been pursuing since September with Julien Papaïx as part of my postdoctoral research at BioSP.