BRUSSELS — French President Emmanuel Macron says a new law may be required to allow more wild wolves to be shot in France, taking advantage of looser EU protections of the predators.

“We’re not going to let the wolf develop and go into [areas] where it competes with our activities,” Macron said during a trip to Aveyron on Thursday, referring to wolf attacks on farmers’ livestock. “And so that means that we must, as we say modestly, cull more of them.”

He said that people “who invent rules and who don’t live with their animals in places where there are bears or wolves should go and spend two nights there.”

Reports of wolf attacks on livestock in France have risen over the last decade and a half, with more than 10,000 reported annual deaths in recent years.

European lawmakers in May greenlit a proposal amending the European Union Habitats Directive, moving the wolf from the list of “strictly protected” to “protected” species.

That makes it easier for farmers in the EU to shoot wolves that threaten their herds. The directive will enter into force on July 14, giving countries until January 2027 to implement the change in national law.

The highly-political push was led by the conservative European People’s Party as part of a campaign to endear themselves to farmers ahead of last year’s European elections. It became a personal project of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose pet pony Dolly was killed by a wolf in 2022.

Green groups say relaxing protection rules is the wrong response.

Macron “is engaging in a rare level of populism by asserting completely false things,” Jean-David Abel, head of the biodiversity network at France Nature Environnement, told Franceinfo on Friday.