For the first time in 200 years, Denmark has a wild wolf pack!
Scientists have recently confirmed that Denmark once again hosts a pack of wolves (Canis lupus), after not having this species living in their country for over 200 years. They have been getting occasional stray wolves from Sweden and Germany, but this is the first time in the last two decades that a pair have actually settled down.
There have only been a few sightings of the wolves, but DNA analyses of their feces have been used to determine that there are one male and one female wolf who lives together in the Jutland region of Denmark. Their exact location is not known to the public, as to not disturb the animals unnecessary.
An Eurasian wolf (Canis lupus lupus). This is not either of the once that are now found in Denmark, but this is what they look like. Image by Wikimedia Commons user Mas3cf, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
The male wolf has been living in Denmark since 2012, but the female is thought to have wandered from northern Germany in the previous summer. The data from the feces showed that she had traveled from southwest of Berlin, which makes it a 550km trip! This might sound like a far distance, but wolves have a naturally large dispersal range, so this is not uncommon. We have seen several examples of this, such as wolves from Siberia in Russia travel to the southern part of Norway.
A map of Denmark, showing the possible paths for the migrating wolves, as well as outlining the distance the female wolf traveled.
As the map above shows, the wolves can enter Denmark from either Sweden of Germany, but generally they have not settled down in Denmark. The point in the map also shows the approximate location of the wolf pair, and as you can see it’s a 5 hour drive from Berlin by car, so it must have taken the wolf quite some time to make the trip.
Since the two wolves are now roaming together, it is fair to assume that they have paired up, and will eventually give birth to puppies. Many people hope to see the first recent Danish-born wolves already this spring, but they might not have bred this year.
Having a wolf pack in Denmark is exciting news for conservationists, but it is also doomed to bring up a lot of political arguing. In both Norway and Sweden, there is a very heated debate about how many wolves should be killed in order to protect the livestock on farms, and I’m sure this debate will be relevant again in Denmark now as well.
Great post and interesting! Here in Switzerland his a very debated topic too. I personally think that everything is part of the big natural system, so we have to learn to live with every species again
Thanks for the comment! I was actually on a lecture about this in Liechtenstein a few years ago, but the lecture was about the Swiss predator politics. It is very interesting to see how different these things are handled in different parts of the world :)
It is nice to see wolves, but not so nice to see them eating your animals, so this has always been a touchy subject. Heated debates often occur in Wisconsin over this same issue.
Yeah, I absolutely agree that it is not nice for the farmers to see their animals getting eaten by wolves or other predators. A lot of them problems here in Norway can be traced back to the fact that most people who keep sheep are having them free-ranging, and let them roam free in the mountains during the spring and summer, and collect them back to the farm for winter. This of course make them easy prey for animals such as wolves. Do you have any traditions of free-ranging animals in this fashion in Wisconsin at all?
Great and informative post! I love these beautiful and shy creatures.
Thanks for the comment. I'm glad you liked the post :)
My pleasure, Valth! :)
Very interesting. We all have a place in this great universe and just need to figure out how best to co-exist.
We must do our best to preserve nature, thus I like it that there are again some free roaming wolves in your country. Are they in a nature reserve our are they on private farmland?
The exact location of the wolves are not known to the public, so I'm not really sure if they are on private land or not. However, I suppose they are, because why would they need to hide the location if they were in a nature reserve or national park? Also, I'm not from Denmark, so I don't really know the details of how their conservation park systems function there, so it might not even matter that they might be on private land. I know for a fact that it would not matter here in Norway, and the wolves would have to be licensed for hunting independently of where they are located.
Anyway, thanks for your comment :)
Thank you for your reply
you best stay away from them
If you enjoyed my post on Wildlife all about Zebras
You will love my post on Wildlife all about Turtles
https://steemit.com/wildlife/@writemore/wildlife-all-about-sea-turtles
I'm not really worried about meeting wolves, they are generally not harmful to humans at all. There have not been any deaths from wolves in Scandinavia in several hundred years, so there is not need to stay away from them in regard to that point ;)
Thanks for commenting! :)