
It estimates that there are currently four packs of wolves and 11 lone wolves in the Netherlands.
The return of the wolf: Wild cubs born in the Netherlands
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63499054
I can scarcely believe there are this many wolves in Europe. How much dog DNA do they carry?
They carry 0 or near 0 dog DNA. These are not ‘survivors’ that somehow managed to live under the radar in the low countries. These are the consequence of people not killing wolves. Wolves, being no different than dogs, produce copious amounts of offspring and saturate all available habitat as soon as people stop killing them. These specific ‘Dutch’ wolves come from the long standing populations in Eastern Europe, and to a smaller degree, to the Italian population (even at its smallest, European wolves always maintained three self supporting populations: central and southern Italy, Spain, and a massive ‘Eastern’ block population).
Due to legal protection, and the aforementioned high productivity, Europe is now full of wolves, especially in those places where agricultural methods concentrate on crops, and on indoor livestock farming.
Economics trump environment to save large carnivores