WOLVES ACROSS BORDERS in the Netherlands

In the first week of June, the largest international conference dedicated to wolves, Wolves Across Borders, took place in Lunteren, the Netherlands.

The previous meeting took place in Sweden in 2023, and the next one is planned for 2028.

As before, researchers of wolf nature from around the world, led by David Mech, gathered in one place.

During four days, issues related to the future of wolves in Europe were intensively discussed, in particular in the Netherlands, the host country, where wolves have returned very recently and are still a novelty for Dutch communities.

A total of over 100 extremely interesting presentations were held in the conference center’s halls, covering the coexistence of humans and wolves, means of protecting livestock (drones!), the impact of wolves on other species’ populations, research methods, and threats to wolves posed by humans.

Our foundation was represented at the conference by Prof. Roman Gula, who gave a presentation entitled “Habitat protection is crucial for the future well-being of Poland’s wolf population,” drawing attention to the ubiquitous urban chaos in Poland that negatively affects the wolf population, but also other animal species.

SAVE was represented in the poster session by Joanna Toczydłowska, who presented the results of an analysis of telemetry data from the collars of four wolves monitored by our foundation (poster title: “Coexistence of wolves and humans. Spatial and temporal analysis of wolves’ habitat use in a human-dominated landscape”).

On the last day of the conference, we went on a walk organized by the hosts around the surrounding areas, marked by former intensive cattle grazing. The original forests were transformed into heaths and dunes, whose sand until recently covered the farmland below. Fortunately, reforestation efforts have allowed most of the damaged areas to be renaturalized (the rest has been preserved in its treeless form as a kind of “relic of the past”).

After the walk, we went to inspect areas located a little further from the center, which, as we already knew, were inhabited by several wolf families. We quickly found traces of their presence – feces lying on an asphalt bike path (full of bones and hair) and the remains of a deer, possibly hunted by wolves.

The conference provided ample opportunity to expand our knowledge about wolves and establish new contacts with researchers from other countries. We hope that the next meeting will be just as successful!

Author: Joanna