On Friday morning, Denmark’s minister for nature and animal welfare stood before reporters to declare that a serious threat had been eliminated. On the lawn a few feet away, beneath a white sheet, lay the body of a young male wolf.
For more than a week, the authorities had hunted it down like a fugitive: armed officers marched through the woods, thermal drones zipped in the skies and residents called in sightings.
“It has been an intensive effort,” said Christian Rabjerg Madsen, the minister.
Then he stood back as a wildlife officer slowly pulled away the white sheet, revealing the dead wolf, killed by a fatal shot to its right flank.
Denmark has an estimated 49 wolves, part of a growing European population. Their return has been hailed as a conservation success. But in countries such as France, Spain, Italy, Sweden and now Denmark, the wolves have brought growing conflicts over livestock, public safety and how to manage the species.
Wolves were believed to have disappeared from Denmark in the early 1800s, because of over-hunting. But they reappeared in 2012 after migrating through Germany. Since then, the animals have become a recurring source of controversy, attacking livestock and, in some instances, getting killed illegally, possibly by angry farmers. This takedown, however, is the first time in years officers killed a wolf themselves.
This young wolf, lean with light brown fur, raised concerns earlier this month after a string of encounters around Norre Nebel, a small town 170 miles west of Copenhagen. Witnesses reported it slipping into private gardens, skirting close to people, and most troubling to officials, showing little inclination to run away.
Its behavior strongly suggested that it had been fed, teaching it to associate humans with food and reward, said Peter Sunde, a Danish wolf expert and professor at Aarhus University.
“If they begin to regard humans as a food source, then that’s the road to trouble,” he said, explaining that authorities take an uncompromising stance toward wolves that approach people.
“A fed wolf is a dead wolf,” he said.
The authorities designated it a “problem wolf” and effectively put out a warrant. For about a week, armed wildlife officers patrolled the area, while thermal drones hunted for the animal’s heat signature after dark. Residents were asked to report sightings.
Wolf experts said it wasn’t really possible to tranquilize it for transport to another area because Denmark has little open land and the wolf would likely behave the same wherever it was and pose the same threat.
Then, on Thursday evening, came the showdown. Wildlife officers found two wolves in a woodsy area near the town where it had been spotted. When the animals emerged, an officer was waiting nearby with a rifle.
One wolf bolted. The other, the “problem,” did not.
As the remaining wolf tried to move around him, the officer fired from about 10 meters away, striking it in the right side and killing it.
The political debate about the wolves has been intensifying since the animals returned to Denmark. As their numbers have grown, so has the divide between those who see the wolf as an important part of the country’s wildlife and those who question whether there is room for it at all in a small, densely populated country. Denmark has few other major predators — there are no bears here.
Mr. Rabjerg Madsen said he wants more flexible rules for killing problem wolves; some lawmakers have gone further, calling for dramatically fewer wolves — or none at all.
“It’s obviously not a happy occasion to have to shoot a wolf, but it was necessary,” he said at the news conference on Friday.
Animal-welfare groups have pushed back, arguing that wolves play an important role in Denmark’s ecosystem by keeping the population of deer in check.
“The mere sight of a wolf can make people afraid,” said Thomas Søby of Dyrenes Beskyttelse, the Danish animal-welfare organization.
But, he added, “We have to learn to live with it.”
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