Howling and prowling celebrities: Bram the wolf and the role of media stories

“Here rests the wolf” reads a white sign with bold, black letters that a local Extinction Rebellion activist hammered into the sandy soil of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug in the Netherlands on the 17^th of August 2025 when dozens of activists marched to protest against the hunt for Bram, a wolf recently declared a ‘safety risk’.  Despite wolves being a protected in the Netherlands, hunters were given permission to kill Bram and in December 2025 they were successful. This entry considers some of the context and discourses circulating Bram, an offspring of some of the first wolves to re-settle in the country and whose brazen personality earned him the title of "problem-wolf" - a label that had very material consequences for him.

Extinction Rebellion activist hammers sign saying ‘Here rests the wolf’ into the soil of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug. Photo: RTV Utrecht / Jelle baars.

Wolves in the Netherlands?

Since at least 2015 wolves have been a hot topic in the Netherlands with some  celebrating their re-entry and others calling for nation-wide culls . As Virginia Thomas points out on The Animal Highlight, one of the reasons wolves face relentless persecution is because they often cross human defined borders that tend to stoke human anxieties around social and ecological orders. Bram's parents entered the Netherlands in 2019 through auto-rewilding: a process that captures how animals decide to (re)enter an area of their own volition. Bram (officially designated GW3237m) was born in 2022 in a context of increasing human-wolf tensions in the country.

The story of wolves in the Netherlands - like in much of Europe - raises complex questions about who ‘nature’ is for, what types of ‘nature’ are allowed, and how countries deal with the reemergence of animal populations who have violent capacities.

Wolves are predators and that they sometimes kill 'agricultural animals' has been decried by farmers and sensationalized in the media. Already in 2015, farmers in the Netherlands complained that wolves pose a threat to their sheep and ten years later these sentiments where still clearly strongly felt with one farmer went so far as to pile approximately twenty sheep corpses next to the road together with a sign that read ‘"Thanks wolf". News articles further fueled anxieties and contributed to the overblown rhetoric about the animals. Articles such as “Wolf jumps anti-wolf fence and mauls tens of sheep to death” and “41 sheep dead in possibly the largest wolf attack ever” illustrate the heightened level of unease directed at the animals.  As Emily Major, Debra Merskin, and Lu Liu’s discuss on The Animal Turn, we need to take such rhetorics seriously because media attention focused on fear can create a culture of cruelty. Vivid imagery of wolves with their fangs exposed, occasionally amplified with AI and articles mentioning ‘blood baths’ and ‘terrorisation’ turn wolves into objects of fear and, as we will see in the case of Bram, can lead to animals being villified and violently managed.

Bram enters the scene and an exit is state sanctioned

In 2024 a wolf came onto the Dutch media scene who did not display a fear of humans and who attacked a dog in one incident and a hiker and child in another. This wolf would soon become known as "Bram", “the problem wolf." Ironically the name "Bram" comes from the dog who he attacked, prior to this he was known as to conservation groups as ‘GW3237m’. Perhaps if he had remained nameless he would not have become a media celebrity and his actions would not have been magnified to such an extent that the government built a case in favour of shooting him.

Although wolves are normally protected under Dutch law, the province of Utrecht applied for permits to kill Bram. The organisations Faunabescherming and Animal Rights appealed to the court to prevent this from happening but, ultimately, the court overruled their objections and, in July of 2025, gave the province the necessary permits to hunt the wolf. Bram was now a target of state sanctioned violence.

The hunters initially thought three weeks would be enough time to get Bram but instead, they found themselves increasingly frustrated by the wolf's elusiveness and the limiting conditions under which the permit allowed for his death. To ensure the correct would was being targeted, Bram could only be shot in a specific area, in broad daylight, and without the use of a lure. Hunters needed to travel in groups of two or three to thwart identification of the eventual killer, and another permit condition stated that Bram could not be shot within eyesight of the general public. Activists used these limiting conditions to their advantage. Calling themselves "wolf-watchers", activists visibly patrolled the woods on hunting days so as to prevent the hunters from taking any shots. Despite these efforts Bram was killed on the 3^rd of December 2025 when he was struck with a “high-energy perforating projectile.”

Thinking about discourse and animals

Bram's story raises questions about the effects of discourse on animals and those who are aligned with or against them. In the increasingly atomized media landscape, pro-wolf people are typified as woke urban elite while opponents are essentialized as rural, nationalist farmers. Both groups, although different, use Bram as a metaphor and a symbol for broader discussions. Opponents constitute Bram as a symbol of fear, diminished freedom, and an indicator of a neglectful government. Proponents, on the other hand, constitute Bram as a symbol of human intolerance.  

These sentiments were made material when permits were issued to kill Bram, when activists intervened in hunting activities, and when he was eventually shot. They continued when farmers celebrated his death and organizations like Animal Rights and Extinction Rebellion organized funeral processions which were subsequently disrupted when  some locals disrupted the procession by punching activists and, in the case of one local, attempting to run them over.

Extinction Rebellion and Animal Rebellion marching to protest the hunt for Bram. “Leave Bram alone”, the banner reads. Photo: ANP.

It is clear that discussions and activities about wolves in the Netherlands exceed questions of ecology and are reflective of a deeper politics about the ambivalence of animals and how they configure in human orderings. As Lauren van Patter argues, this is also reflective of imaginaries that position animals in idealized ecologies that do not really exist.

For decades there have been efforts to help wolf numbers rebound but these have tended to focus on ecological dynamics with little attention to the fraught socio-political landscapes these animals move through.

In many ways, the moral panic around wolves is unjustified as the "livestock" wolves kill are often within the margins of the number of animals farmers expect to die and, lest we not forget, these "agricultural animals" are also intended for slaughter. Furthermore, while wolves do appear to be becoming more brazen and habituated to human settlements (what choice do they have in this regard?) there has not been a single verified fatal wolf attack on humans in the past 40 years. On the flip side, at least 900 wolves are deliberately killed per annum in Europe but, unlike Bram, their stories often go unreported and uncontested.

As for Bram: he continues to be a spectacle. For supposedly ‘educational purposes,’ The Naturalis Museum of Natural History is giving guests an opportunity to observe the process of Bram being taxidermied . His taxidermied body will then be displayed at the Natural History Museum of Rotterdam in the permanent exhibit ‘Dead animals with a story to tell’. What does Bram's story tell us? It tells us that a focus on conservation and population numbers as well as the stoking of fear and anxiety can be - and often is - lethal for the animals involved. It teaches us that to coexist with other animals we need to focus on politics as well as develop robust visions of how multispecies societies can (and should) function.

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The WWF has compiled an interesting list of facts (each justified with facts and figures) about wolves in Europe, they are:

1. Wolves are not dangerous to humans

2. Wolves play a key role in maintaining healthy ecosystems and biodiversity 

3. We already have effective tools available to protect livestock 

4. Shooting wolves to protect livestock is ineffective and counterproductive

5. Preventive measures are the solution to achieve coexistence

6. The wolf enjoys strong public support, including from the EU’s inhabitants of rural areas

7. Member States have ample flexibility to address potential problems with wolves 

8. The impact of wolves on livestock in the EU is very small

9. Wolves can bring benefits to local communities

10. There are numerous success stories of coexistence in Europe

11. Wolf populations are recovering but they are far from favourable status

12. Wolves have returned naturally across Europe 

13. As a top predator, it’s a wolf’s natural behaviour to kill vulnerable ungulates

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 Herre de Bondt completed his PhD in anthropology at Roehampton University in London in 2025 for which he dove into the world of bird feeding in gardens and public urban spaces. With a background in anthropology and urban studies, Herre conducted various multispecies research projects ranging from crows in Tokyo, to gulls in The Hague, and to rats in Amsterdam. Previously a fellow with the Animal Turn, Herre now volunteers as an assistant content producer for the show. 

You can connect with Herre via Twitter (@HerreBondt).Learn more about our team here.