Who’s afraid of the big, bad wolf? Well, not Anne Ménatory for one. Dubbed by the popular press as France’s wolf woman, she throws back her head and scoffs at such simplistic sloganeering. In fact after just half an hour in her company the chances are that you too are unlikely to be afraid of any wolf at all, big and small alike, as she entices you to come within just a yard or two of their presence.

"Of course I’m not the wolf woman", she says with a huge grin on her face, and hurling small chunks of meat into the air in order to keep them from coming a little too close for comfort. "That phrase is ridiculous. But I do have enormous respect for wolves. They have their lives, and I have mine. I do love to observe them though - and often when the visitors have left I will wander off and sit in the middle of their territory. They always leave me alone - in fact I feel so at ease with them that if I have had a busy day the chances are I will drift off to sleep. But I have no role in their lives. They don’t want me and they don’t need me. You must always stay humble with these animals."

Its all beginning to sound quite cutesy, is it not? After all, if you had not paid the entrance fee and there was not a huge notice board outside marked "Les Loups du Gévaudan" you might be excused for thinking that you were in the presence of a group of Husky dogs or Alsatians. That is until you take a closer look at their massive, powerful paws. Plus at Ménatory’s wolf park - the only one of its kind in Europe - there are helpful notices all round, laden with everything you could ever possibly need to know about wolves. Such as the fact that by the age of 5 months a wolf will have a full set of 42 teeth - 20 for the top jaw, 22 for the bottom. Teeth with which a wolf can easily snap a bone (in contrast to an Alsatian, which cannot) - owing to a massive pressure of 150 kilos per square centimeter which it can exert upon you. Or rather upon one rather foolish visitor who thought it would be a good idea to allow a wolf to lick her fingers. The licking went smoothly enough - but the fun stopped when she suddenly found herself in the accidents and emergency department of the local hospital minus the top section of her right index finger - the one and only accident ever to have taken place in the highly successful park, now one of the premier tourist destinations in the Lozere department of southern France. Only then do you realize that you are in the presence of a powerful predator - and, according to Anne Ménatory, a widely misunderstood predator at that.

I must be honest and confess that I had had in mind a cozy chat with Anne, the attractive 34 year old daughter of the park’s founder Gerard Ménatory, sitting comfortably in her offices whilst tucking into coffee and croissants as my Sony tape-recorder whirred away. No such luck. Anne is very much a hands-on boss and although she has a couple of young assistants to cope with the rush during the busy summer season, she will personally oversee the greater part of the hour-long guided tours herself. Which means that if you want to know about wolves, off you jolly well go. A couple of minutes later Anne is in full flow, her infectious enthusiasm enchanting the assembled crowd.

Not so very long afterwards you are positively brimming over with wolf facts. Did you know, for example, the park has a mixture of 178 Polish, Siberian, Canadian and Mongolian wolves, each animal consuming some 5 kilos of meat per week? Or that their average life expectancy is approximately 12 years - which is some 4 years more than in the wild where the process of natural selection is much more severe? Or that the expressions of wolves are often in the position of their tails? In any event, don’t even think of interrupting Anne at this point, for she is in full flow, her love and dedication to her wolves gushing out of every single cell in her being. The information is continuing to flow thick and fast: unlike many humans couples wolves stay together throughout their lives; that an average wolf will weigh approximately 50 kilos; that a wolf is sexually mature at the age of 3; that a pregnancy will last for 63 days, a litter of 4-6 cubs being the norm. After which the cubs are brought up collectively, the adults feeding them on the regurgitated meat of their prey. The howling of wolves, she explains, is their own language, providing contact between different families, issuing warning signals of danger, localizing and identifying individuals, providing invitations to hunt, notifying the arrival of large game or inviting another clan to join in - their howls capable of being heard from a distance of several kilometers away. Living in a hierarchical society wolves are social animals par excellence, with the most evolved system of organization in the animal kingdom (8-14 wolves making up a clan, with each clan governed by a dominant couple who maintain strict discipline) - and thus closest to that of man. Which probably goes a long way to explain why unlike the dog, the wolf has been a long, long way from being man’s best friend. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Did you know that the French state has always given money to the killing of a wolf?", Anne rhetorically asks her guests, still shocked at the thought of the slaying of these magnificent beasts. "Why?" "I can tell you why", she replies, before anyone from the audience has had the time to come up with an answer. "Because wolves have always been man’s competitor for game. Wolves are not like dogs. You can whistle at a wolf - but he will only ever come when he wants to. We have never been able to domesticate wolves as pets, or for hunting, independence is the watchword. Which is his strength, of course, but also his weakness. Because man does not like what eludes him."

You don’t have to look too far to find out where Anne’s passion for wolves came from.

"It was because of my father", she explains. "He founded this park 35 years ago. And I inherited my love of wolves from him. I love all animals - but I do have a special soft spot for wolves. I saw my first wolf when I was just three years old. I shared my childhood with wolves of every kind. There were two solutions - to be disgusted or to love them. I chose the latter. You get very attached to them. The thing is to not expect them to behave like dogs, because they do not. Although I have to say that I find their independence very attractive too."

With two older brothers Anne had always assumed that the boys would one day end up running the park, which is now a thriving business too. And she went off to the handsome city of Montpellier in the neighbouring department of the Hérault to study modern languages, a combination of English and German. Only to then go and travel extensively - including a prolonged visit to Kenya in East Africa. Then a combination of circumstances led to a telephone call between father and daughter. One brother had gone into journalism; the other qualified as an engineer. With his own health ailing, her father Gérard asked Anne outright - would she come back and take over the running of the park?

"I didn’t think for more than two minutes about it", she reveals. "I was only too delighted. I loved wolves. Always have done and always will do. People often ask me if I get bored with wolves, talking about them all day long. To which I say ‘no, I do not’. In fact when the day is over I will often wander back off towards the wolves to change their water, or take a stroll around the park, when I meet up with the wolves again. And when I do there is always that same passion. This is the only wolf park in the whole of Europe. It is my duty to ensure that it flourishes. And that is precisely what I intend to do."

ENDS

For further information:

Les Loups du Gévaudan

Sainte-Lucie

48100

Marvejols

France

Tel: + 33 (0) 466 32 09 22