The SAVE Wildlife Conservation Fund at the International Congress in Spain

SAVE sponsored research paper and its implications for the protection of wolves and for forestry attracts much interest.

From 20th to 23rd of April 2017, an international congress titled “Wolf Management and Conservation in North America and Europe – An unresolved conflict“ took place in Zamora in the Northwest of Spain. One of the participants was Katarzyna Bojarska, whose research is supported by SAVE. Her study “Anthropogenic environmental traps: Where do wolves kill their prey in a commercial forest?“ has just recently been published in the scientific journal “Forest Ecology and Management“.

The investigation consisted in the question which habitat attributes increase predation success in wolf hunting for ungulates in an intensively managed forest of Western Poland. The results suggest that forestry management may influence prey vulnerability and selection by wolves. Management practices create environmental traps (e.g. fences, habitat edges) that help wolves to kill their prey. This knowledge can be applied in forest management to facilitate ungulate-damage prevention, for instance by small instead of large-scale clear-cuts. Therefore, we can conclude: The presence of wolves in commercial forests may be a situation with benefits for forestry and wolf conservation.