Wolf found in Netherlands, first for 150 years

A dead animal found by a road in the Netherlands was a wolf, thought to be the first to be discovered in the country for 150 years, official said. DNA tests were conducted on the animal, apparently killed by a car near Luttelgeest in the northern Netherlands, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported Monday. Since the discovery there has been debate among Dutch conservationists over whether wolves are in fact living in the Netherlands or if the dead animal was carried across the German border. A local conservation group claimed the dead wolf was more likely from Germany or Poland and may have been dumped by the roadside as a "joke" by East European agricultural workers in the region. "There could not have been a living one here. No one has come forward because they have hit one, no footprints have been found and a wolf is too shy to come to such a densely populated area," Nettie van den Belt, a spokesman for the group Faunabeheer Flevoland, said. But another group, "Wolven in Nederland," which campaigns "to prepare the Netherlands for the expected return of wolves to our country," said the discovery should come as no surprise given the growth of the wolf population in neighboring Germany. "I have looked forward to the wolf's arrival in the Netherlands for six years," group spokesman Leo Linnartz said. "Based on the rapid growth of the population in Germany, the migration of the animal was really just a case of wait and see."