It is a rather unusual visit to which Sébastien Alavoine and his wife Karine Boscherini were entitled in their garden, in Levens in the Alpes-Maritimes, this Thursday morning.
The owner says: “It was my wife who saw it before leaving this morning. At first, she took him for a stray dog, but we soon saw that he was a wolf. She was a little surprised, but had time to take a picture of it“.
A rather rare event, which did not worry the couple. “It’s the first time it’s happened to us, he was about ten meters from our house“, explains Sébastien Alavoine. “We love animals anyway, we had no intention of hurting him or anything.“.
“A curious animal by nature”
But was it really a wolf? For Nicolas Jean, coordinator of the Wolf Brigade at the National Office for Hunting and Wildlife, there is no doubt, seeing the photo: “With its stature, its coat, its color and then with the general attitude of the animal, I confirm that it is indeed a wolf.“
And according to the specialist, the Levensois couple had the right reflex: “The first thing to do, yes, it’s good to take a picture of it, both to immortalize it and to monitor the species. Then, it remains a wild animal, so as for a deer, we do not approach and we do not feed it“.
Another important point,he must not feel trapped. For 30 years that the wolf has been present in France, we have never recorded a bite or anything else of the kind, it is simply a curious animal by naturewhich will often try to observe you, since it examines its environment constantly“.
Nicolas Jean specifies that there are around twenty packs of wolves in the Alpes-Maritimes, and that they travel 30 to 40 kilometers a day to meet their daily needs.
The wolf photographed this Thursday will therefore probably be far from Levens tomorrow at the same time. “It’s their nature“, concludes the specialist.
