Caroline van der Plas, the leader of pro-countryside party BBB, has supported a comment by BBB MP Henk Vermeer about “a wolf-free zone the size of the Netherlands” on social media.

Vermeer, who was being interviewed on current affairs programme Sven op 1, said wolves are beautiful animals but should not live near people. ‘There have already been two attacks on children,” Vermeer said, referring to incidents in Utrecht involving a 10 year-old and a three-year-old.

“The wolf must go,” Vermeer said.

Experts have since said the three-year-old has been pushed to the ground as the wolf was making for a dog and experts doubt the 10-year-old was bitten at all. There is also no evidence that another dog was taken by a wolf, as has been claimed.

The farmers’ party has long lobbied for a lower protection status for the wolf which would include the killing of “problem wolves” that attack sheep but has never before called for a ban. Vermeer did not say how this was to be achieved.

He did say that he did not expect parliament would support a motion calling for a ban, but that he hoped the farm minister, who represents the BBB, would take action in Brussels to have the wolf’s protected status relaxed.

Licence to kill

Meanwhile, a hunter from Friesland who took the justice ministry to court to demand a licence to shoot wolves “in self-defence” has been told that attacks on sheep were not a good enough reason to issue a hunting licence and that, in any case, the wolf is a protected species.

The hunter was asking for the licence on behalf of a sheep farmer. But the court said the farmer in question should concentrate on preventing the attacks by using wolf-proof fencing and dogs.