This eternal battle in Spain in not just between man and nature, but among humans. The freshly slain body of a still bleeding wolf was found hanging from a signpost along a highway in northern Spain last weekend, reigniting the debate over the killings of the protected species, reports El País.

Here is a photograph that has been circulating on Spanish websites in the past few days:

Two other dead wolves were found in a parking lot in the Spanish region of Asturias late last week. The grim discoveries have swung the spotlight once again onto the tug-o-war between ecologists trying to protect the species and farmers who say the animals are a danger to their livestock. Restrictions on hunting and other conservation efforts since the 1970s have helped bring the Iberian wolf back from the brink of extinction, but the species remains officially listed as vulnerable.

The environmental division of Spain's State Attorney's office said it would investigate the killings, a decision that came after the World Wildlife Fund had written to the State Attorney's office to denounce "a situation of impunity that creates social alarm."

The last census counted 38 wolf packs living in Asturias. Twenty-nine individual animals in the region were culled in the past year to manage the population, out of a legal maximum of 45.

Manuel Calvo, who heads the principality's National Resources Department, told El País that the man-nature balance can be tricky to maintain. "Farmers say we don't cull enough wolves," he says. For environmentalists we cull too many."

By L. Finch

Worldcrunch iQ contributor network.