Developing A Territorial Approach to Wolves through Agri-food Practices. A Survey on the Relations Between Biodiversity and Food in Belledonne

Abstract

Since their return to France, wolves have been the subject of much controversy and the cause of many conflicts due to their impact on domestic herds. The persistence of such conflicts over the last 30 years is tied to a combination of ethological, ecological, social, economic, political and legal issues, each articulated at various local and global scales (Dumez et al., 2017), found more generally in human/wildlife conflict (Redpath et al. 2013). Among these many issues, one challenge relates to the future of rural and mountainous regions affected by wolves. While these regions are the topic of diverging forecasts regarding the manner in which biodiversity conservation or agropastoral breeding should be handled, their future is not really seen as a political issue requiring a collective debate.2 Yet, wolves highlight the contradictory injunctions and the overlooked theoretical and political ideas in terms of the relationship between the conservation of remarkable and ordinary biodiversity and food that mountainous regions are faced with. Acting as food producer, landscape creator and environmental preserver, agropastoral practices have committed towards greening approaches that have been recognised by public policies.