130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Drivers of recovery
Figure 2.
Distribution of
European Grey wolf
in France in 1792 [25] ,
1898 [25] , 1918 [25] and
2008 [15] . The species
was extinct in the
country by 1960 [12] .
Figure 3.
Change in Grey
wolf population
abundance by
decade and overall
change between
1970 and 2005. There
are no data available
for 1960. Please
note that due to the
way change was
calculated, decadal
change does not sum
to overall change.
% change
500
400
300
200
100
0
a 50% reduction compared to 1800. It is possible,
however, that the contractions observed are the
result of low spatial resolution in the 1950–60 map.
In line with changes in range, European wolf
populations have quadrupled in abundance
between 1970 and 2005 (Figure 3). This represents
an increase of 300% over the study period, with
consistently positive change occurring in each
decade, although growth was minimal between
2000 and 2005 (Figure 3). This is in line with the
literature, which for example quotes a quadrupling
of wolf numbers in Spain between 1970 and the
present [12] . Abundance trends for Grey wolf were
based on 31 populations from most of the species’
current range, covering 65% of all countries of
occurrence, and accounting for a minimum of 64%
or 7,850 individuals of the European estimate from
2009–13. While all of the species populations listed
in Table 2 were covered by the data set, information
was missing from Ukraine and a number of the
Balkan countries, Estonia, Lithuania, and Sweden.
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000–05 1970–2005
For our data set on Grey wolf in Europe, positive
abundance change was associated with the Western
European regions, specifically France and Germany.
Both of these countries have experienced sudden
reappearances of extant populations relatively
recently. In France, recolonisation from Italy
started in the early 1990s [24] , while wolves were
first discovered near the German-Polish border in
1998 [26] . Examination of ancillary information for
the time series in the data set reveals that reasons
for population increase (given for 60% of the populations)
include legal protection and natural recolonisation,
and it is perhaps these interventions that
underlie the large increase seen in European wolf
populations in this study (Table 3). More specifically,
these two factors are interlinked and also interact
with public acceptance. A recent study has found
that the affective component in the local human
population acts as a stronger predictor of accepted
management options than beliefs about the impact
or knowledge of the species [27] . As such, the gradual
rise in public acceptance of the species since its
widespread decline in the mid-20 th century has
been instrumental in the implementation of legal
protection across the wolf’s range [12, 27] . Because of its
resilience and ability to disperse and adapt, the wolf
was able to exploit the concurrent decrease in persecution
and consequently spread into suitable habitat
from its remaining range over long distances [12] .
Secondly, it has also benefitted from the increase
in available food resulting from the recoveries
observed in wild ungulate populations such as Roe
deer (Capreolus capreolus) (see section 3.7) and Red
deer (Cervus elaphus) (see section 3.8) [12] . Changes in
land use and the rise in land abandonment have also
been cited as reasons for comeback [1] , although they
will have played a much smaller role.
Recent developments
Populations of the Grey wolf have been recovering
in many of the core areas across the species’
European range, but of particular importance are
the recent increases at the limits of its current distribution
(Figure 4). New packs and territorial pairs
have, for example, been discovered in Poland and
Germany [28] . In the German Lausitz region, there
were nine confirmed packs and one territorial pair
in 2011, up from six pairs in 2010 [26] . In addition,
there have been first sightings of wolves for around
150 years in the centre of the country, for example in
the states of Hessen [29] and Rheinland-Pfalz [30] . This
central European population will undoubtedly play
a pivotal role in the further expansion of the species
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