> but their sudden reintroduction in the Netherlands feels ill thought out.

I don’t think it was a reintroduction, nor was it sudden.

AFAIK, they came back on their own accord, and their return was fairly slowly, after wolves returned to western Germany.

https://wolf.org/wow/europe/netherlands/:

“In a paper published in 2016, “The first proof of the recent presence of Wolves in the Netherlands,” authors wrote:

“In light of the expansion of wolves from the Polish border to the northwest of Germany and the sightings in Denmark, the appearance of the wolf in the Netherlands was no surprise to most experts. In March 2015, this expectation was fulfilled when, after generations without resident wolves, a single wolf wandered through the Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Groningen in broad daylight. From 7 to 10 March 2015, the Netherlands witnessed the comeback of an iconic species.”

Since 2019, the country has once again become home to its first pack of wolves with young pups after 150 years. Genetic sampling revealed the Netherlands wolves came from an Alpine population and Central European populations (i.e. Germany)“