Did our ancestors ever drive the wolf from our lands, and if so, why and how?

Answer

In the links below you will find a lot of information. Very briefly:

• The main reason for the disappearance is the loss of wild prey and open space in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The population grew, and the areas between towns and villages were increasingly cleared and hunted. As a result, wolves were forced to target large and small livestock instead of smaller game, after which they hunted themselves. That wolf populations were able to temporarily recover during periods of depopulation during the Eighty Years’ War is an indication of this.
• There were even bounty systems to exterminate wolves. Hunting wolves was also glorified as an act of civilization. Wolves were effectively key links in the transmission of rabies, and in addition, there were unconfirmed stories of “man-eating” wolves. There were very rare reports of ‘des loups enragés’ furiously attacking everything and everyone, but no real reports of wolves targeting people specifically or in groups. But they were both reasons for exterminating wolves. In the Castle of the Counts you can still find the right front leg of a wolf that was killed in Knesselare in 1736. Officially, the last two wolves in Belgium were shot dead by Leopold I in Custinne (Houyet) after a manhunt on Valentine’s Day 1845. Although that could have been a day later, or by another hunter in the royal party… In any case, you can still find a memorial stone (la tombe du loup), and one of the animals is mounted and kept in the Royal Natural History Museum. And later in the 19th century, Belgian wild wolves were still killed in Merksplas and Virton, among others, and in 1923 in Evelette near Namur.
• Around 1840 there was also an outbreak of wolf plague, a contagious disease that seemed to affect only wolves. It is still unclear which disease it was exactly (parvovirus? CDV/Carré disease? ICH/dog jaundice?), but after 1840 wolves were extremely rare in Belgium (and the rest of Western Europe).