Paper Short Abstract:

In the conflict surrounding the presence of the wolf in Spain, the scientific literature gives little or no importance to the role played by ungulates. This paper will focus on what their presence tells us about the so-called conflict between humans and wolves.

Paper Abstract:

Over the past decade, the return of large predators to Europe has been described and documented by conservation scientists (Chapron et al., 2014). Among these emblematic species, the return of the wolf is particularly controversial (Pates and Leser, 2021). The scientific literature on the subject tries to explain the factors that make the relationship between humans and wolves confrontational, without really considering the third party in this conflict: livestock. Devoured by wolves, butchered and sold by humans for consumption or exploitation, the flesh of certain ungulates is at the heart of the “conflict” between wolves and humans. Taking up the main lines of an anthropological investigation carried out in northern Spain, this paper proposes to approach the “wolf problem” in this country through the notion of necropolitics (Mbembe). Focusing on what the “ungulate presence”, both invisibilized and overlooked, tells us about this socio-environmental conflict, the focus will be on the management of the life, death and flesh of ungulates as a commodity. More specifically, certain survey results will be placed in dialogue with the existing literature on the conflict around the wolf, enabling us both to clarify the terms and to specify the specificities of the Spanish case.