EUROPE’S JUNGLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16416, 3 May 1921, Page 6

EUROPE’S JUNGLE.

WILD ANIMALS INCREASING. ' STRANGE RESULT OF THE WAR. | One strange result pf the great war i is that many of the fiercer wild animals have become commoner in Europe than they havo been for many years. Only recently in the French Alps, near Modane, a village priest was attacked by a female brown bear, and it waa with great difficulty that he managed to escape after he had been • wounded by the brute. This was* the first appearance of tho brown bear in the district named for ■ many years. Bruin having become rarer ! and * rarer in Southern Europe. No ! doubt owing to the withdrawal of so ! many able-bodied men during the war i the 'bear has become bolder, and has | probably multiplied to a considerable j extent in places where he would not have ventured previously. In several i parts of the Alps, where the creature was supposed to be extinct, lie has recently made his appearance. Of course, fifty or sixty years ago brown bears had to be reckoned with seriously by the Alpine goatheards. Often at night, when the goats and their keepers were shut up snugly inside their wooden huts, a bear would come to the shelter and scratch and tear at the door for hours, trying to get inside at the inmates. It must have been a weird experience to be shut up m one of those huts, with the terror-stricken goats, away from all help, and to hear the great growling beast outside tearing at tho door and throwing his weight against the avails, knowing that he was frankly seeking a meal. EUROPE’S FIERCEST ANIMAL. If the brown hear is now multiplying to any great extent in the Alps, it will add a new and unexpected peril to the lives of the hardy mountain peasants who already have to combat the eagle and the fox. The lynx, too, according to some authorities, is on the increase in the Alpine districts. This animal lias been described as undoubtedly the most dangerous and destructive beast of prey left in Europe. “If he comes upon a flock of goats or sheep,” says one who knows Ins ways, “ he. approaches dragging himself along the ground like a snake: then raises himself with a bound, falls on the back of his victim, breaks its neck, and kills it instantly.” But the Alps is not the only part of Europe where fierce animals are growing in numbers as a direct result of the Great War. In the pine forests of the Belgian Ardennes wild boars have grown so bold that they have actuallybeen raiding the villages, a thing unheard of for many years. Here, again, the absence of so many able-bodied men on active service gave them opportunities of multiplying that they had not had for a very Jong time pa’st. In the North of Europe there is the same story. Wolves have enormously increased in numbers in Russia, and life in the forest lands is extremely dangerous owing to the packs which prowl about in search of prey. The result is that the growing numbers of wolves, finding food scarcer owing to competition, have been spreading farther and farther west and south. M olves have appeared in considerable numbers in Northern Sweden for the first time for many years, and have been attacking tho reindeer. Many hundreds of these valuable domestic animals have fallen victims to the wolves, and as the wolves are getting extremely bold it is difficult for the scattered people to combat them effectively. It looks as though civilised -man in Europe, who has been too buev fighting his own kind for years to fight the fierce four-footed animals that are his natural foes, has given them a chance of reasserting their claims; and he will now have once more to set about the conquest of the jungle—or what stands for the jungle in Europe—as his ancestors did in the days of old. This increase of the larger beasts of prey in Europe proves how easily and how rapidly the whole world would again become a vast jungle teeming with fierce creatures did man but relax his efforts for a short time.