Police investigate death of wolf in Harksamp

The police are investigating the death of a wolf in Harskamp in Gelderland on Wednesday night. This investigation is being carried out to rule out foul play.

The police were alerted at 12:30 a.m. that a wolf had been hit on the Westenengerdijk. There, the officers found the wolf, the car, and the 22-year-old driver from the municipality of Ede. The wolf died shortly afterwards, the police reported on X.

Do 5 september 00.30 uur kregen we melding van een aangereden wolf op de Westenengerdijk in Harskamp. Ter plaatse troffen we de wolf, auto en bestuurder (22-jarige man uit gemeente Ede) aan. De wolf is kort daarna overleden. We doen onderzoek om een misdrijf uit te sluiten. ^SG

— Politie Gelderland (@POL_Gelderland) September 6, 2024

Whether the wolf was actually killed or whether something else may have happened is still being investigated, according to a police spokesperson. The deliberate killing of a wolf, a protected animal species, is prohibited by law and can be punished with a prison sentence or a fine.

A DNA test should shed light on which wolf is involved. It could be a wolf native to the Netherlands, but it could also be a “roaming” wolf, for example, from Germany. BIJ12, the organization that handles wolf cases for the provinces and collects all kinds of data on wolves, does not expect the results for about two months. “Or the province of Gelderland should decide to have an emergency analysis carried out if it wants to know as quickly as possible which wolf it is. Then the result could be available within two weeks,” said a BIJ12 spokesperson.

According to him, the recent encounters with wolves for which the DNA result is now known mainly involved wandering wolves that had not settled in a specific location in the Netherlands. Wolves that have stayed in a certain place for a longer period usually avoid public roads. Harskamp is located northwest of the Veluwe, where seven wolf packs have settled. Three other packs live in Central Drenthe, in the border area Friesland-Drenthe-Overijssel and on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, according to BIJ12.