“Wolf, wolf are you there?
» If he was in the woods, this wolf probably didn't stay there long.
German, French and Catalan laboratories have documented and revealed this Monday the 1,240 km journey completed in three years by a gray wolf.
The specimen thus becomes the record holder for the longest distance ever recorded, the previous one being 1,092 km between Norway and Finland, report our colleagues from France 3.
Born in 2020 in Nordhom (Germany), the animal joined France and the Haute-Saône department in 2022 before continuing its adventure in Catalonia.
“Traces of the wolf were detected in February 2023,” confirmed the Catalan Rural Agents in a press release.
🐺Documentat of the movements of dispersió mes llarges but may be lost.
It records 1,240 quilòmetres between Alemanya and Alta Ribagorça
✔️The collaboration between Alemanya, France and Catalonia allows you to determine the individual's record @UABBarcelona @accioclimatica pic.twitter.com/jV9JVXPAzy
— Agents Rurals (@agentsruralscat) February 19, 2024
The animal's excrement was detected last Tuesday, February 13 in Catalonia thanks to the use of dogs specifically trained to identify the feces of large carnivores.
Their genetic analysis confirmed that the wolf belonged to the Central and Eastern European population.
This is the first time that a wolf of this species has been detected in Spain.
“A sample was sent for analysis to the French Antagene laboratory, which confirmed the coincidence with an individual previously located in the Burgundy region, in the east of France.
More precisely, it was the individual called by the scientists GW1909m, which had also previously been located in Germany,” specify the Catalan authorities.
Photographed in France in summer 2022
This wolf was detected in France in June 2022, when a driver took a photo of the animal at the side of a road in the town of Fleurey-lès-Faverney (Haute-Saône).
An agent from the French Agency for Biodiversity (OFB) then managed to collect some precious hairs from a fence at the place where the witness had seen the wolf.
The analyzes carried out showed that the latter carried a genetic trait common in Germany.
A sample was therefore sent across the Rhine, and it perfectly matched a previously identified male wolf.
Also read “It is only threatening if it is cornered”: can the wolf really attack man?
According to the Catalan authorities, this specimen is an example of the “behavioral adaptation and physical capacity of this large wild canid”.
Its journey is thus “particularly impressive if we consider that the animal did not travel across vast wilderness areas, but rather dispersed over such a long distance across the anthropogenic or anthropized landscapes of Western Europe” .
Wolf populations virtually disappeared from Catalonia at the beginning of the 20th century.
The first individuals were detected in 2003. Two decades later, the packs have still not settled in the territory, which has a few isolated individuals, most of them coming from France.