130925-studie-wildlife-comeback-in-europe

Estimate Year assessed Reference
Global No data -
-
Europe 9,860,049 2005
[8, 10–12, 17–32]
% of global population No data
Albania No data - -
Austria 1,050,000 2005
[33]
Belarus 51,190 2003
[12]
Belgium ~60,000 2006
[34]
Bulgaria 71,000 2006
[12]
Croatia 41,500 2002
[35]
Czech Republic 292,800 2004
[11]
Denmark 200,000 2005
[17]
Estonia ~50,000 2005
[18]
France 1,200,000 2005
[19]
Germany ~2,400,000 2010
[20]
Greece No data - -
Hungary 316,157 2005
[21]
Italy 426,000 2005
[22]
Latvia ~130,000 2005
[18]
Lithuania ~80,000 2005
[18]
Luxembourg 24,000 2003
[12]
Macedonia 5,000 2002
[12]
Moldova 2,300 2002
[12]
Montenegro 1,627 2005
[12]
Netherlands ~60,000 1992
[23]
Norway 90,000 2005
[24]
Poland 692,000 2005
[10]
Portugal 3,000–5,000 2010
[25]
Romania 159,000 2006
[26]
Serbia 120,000 2005
[27]
Slovakia 80,000–85,000 2010
[28]
Slovenia 150,000 2005
[29]
Spain 600,000 2005
[30]
Sweden 800,000 2010
[31]
Switzerland 133,575 2004
[32]
Ukraine 120,900 1999
[12]
United Kingdom ~450,000 2007
[8]
Table 2.
Latest population
estimates for the
Roe deer globally,
in Europe and
for European
populations. No
information was
available for Albania
and Greece.
of Corsica [19] . While the species was formerly
restricted to forest, colonisation of more open
habitats started from the 1980s, leading to
marked population recoveries in agrosystems [38] ,
Mediterranean landscapes [39] and mountainous
areas [19] . The hunting bag has steadily increased
since the early 1970s, and although 500,000
individuals were culled in 2004, some argue that
this Figure should be higher [19] .
In Austria, the situation is comparable: as the
most common ungulate, the Roe deer occurs in
90% of the country, with a maximum population
density of about 40 per km 2 [33] . There has also
been a linear increase in the hunting bag [33] . While
culling intensity was already high in the early
1960s, particularly in the west of the country,
it is now more than 2 per km 2 per year in most
administrative districts, with the exception of
parts of Tyrol, and the areas around Innsbruck and
Vienna [33] . The other main source of mortality are
vehicle collisions, which account for around 8% of
individuals killed in 2005 [33] .
Abundance and distribution: changes
According to available range data, the Roe deer was
widely distributed in 1900 across an area of around
2,700,000 km 2 covering central Europe from
eastern France to Russia (with the exception of
Italy and the Balkan peninsula), Scotland, eastern
Denmark, southern Sweden and the easternmost
part of European Russia (Figure 1a). Phylogeographic
analyses indicate that some populations
persisted in some small patches in Iberia [40, 41] . This
distribution was the result of increases in the latter
half of the 19th century which followed declines up
to around 1800 [9] . Since then, the species has gained
ground, now occupying around 2.2 times its range
in 1900 (Figure 1a). Most of this change occurred
between 1900 and 1967, when deer distribution
almost doubled, spreading outwards from its core
central European range (Figure 1a). In Scandinavia,
for example, the Roe deer was restricted to a
population of around 200 individuals in the southernmost
part of Sweden before 1850, but expanded
its range after 1850 at a rate of around 12 km per
year [24] .
A further extension of 25% between 1967
and the present day resulted in the species now
reaching across the European continent from
Scandinavia into the South of Spain, France and
Italy and as far as east of the Caucasus. However,
rates of expansion over this time period have
varied greatly, both across Europe and at sub-regional
levels. In southern Scandinavia, it was of
much slower pace despite the fact that habitat
was deemed more optimal for the species [42] .
Conversely, range expanded by 2.3% per annum
between 1972 and 2002 in the United Kingdom, and
the species was predicted to spread even further to
cover around 79% of mainland Britain within ten
years [43] . In addition, positive range change in Spain
between the 1960s and the present day is likely
to be an underestimation, as the Roe deer was
less widespread around its glacial refuges in 1967
than depicted in Figure 1a [41] . The expansion of the
species from these areas occurred primarily over
the last 30–40 years, especially in the northwest of
the country [41] .
Range contraction has only occurred at a sub-regional
level in the southern extreme of the species’
range in Spain (due to habitat restrictions [41] ) and
Italy (Figure 1b). It is in these areas that populations
are generally more disjunct than others (Figure 1b).
This is a particular concern as populations here are
believed to be distinct from the European clade
since the last glaciation [22, 30] and may be seriously
compromised from a genetic point of view [22] .
The overall positive trend is also reflected
in the change in population size. Monitored
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