A gray wolf in the Carpathian region of Romania. Staffan Widstrand
Between Nordhorn, a German city in Lower Saxony that borders the Netherlands, and the Ilerda municipality of Lleida there is a distance of 1,240 kilometers, the equivalent of a 16-hour trip by car and 333 hours walking.
The long distance, which can cause vertigo even for the most fond of hiking, did not intimidate a wolf - of the
Cris Lupus
breed - who, at only two years old, took that path and arrived last winter in Catalonia.
A collaborative study between German, French and Catalan genetic laboratories, in which the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) has participated, has confirmed this journey and, at the same time, the largest dispersion of a gray wolf recorded throughout the world.
On February 13, 2023, the dogs of the Special Canine Group alarmed the Rural Agents of Alta Ribagorça (Lleida) device by detecting the feces of “a large carnivore” in their forests.
The operational team coordinated by Gabriel Lampreave, together with the Department of Climate Action of the Generalitat, had been on the trail of the mammal for months.
Natalia Sastre Alaiz, researcher at the Molecular Genetics Veterinary Service at the UAB, explained that when Lampreave sent them the samples, they performed a mitochondrial DNA analysis that yielded a “very strange” result, since it was not an Iberian wolf or italic, the most common species in Catalonia.
“We saw that there were Russian wolf genes and we wondered where that wolf had come from,” admits Sastre.
Once the results of the analysis were confirmed with other tests, the UAB researchers contacted the French laboratory which, “to their surprise”, already had it identified in its database.
A year earlier, a driver alerted local authorities that a wolf was running across the road in the Haute Saone region of France.
Following the warning, the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) genetically analyzed some hairs of the animal that they found in a wire fence in the area.
When checking the results of the analysis, the Antagene laboratory found a DNA haplotype called “w1”, a genetic trait typical of Germany and Central Europe, very rare among wolves in France.
To investigate this genetic “anomaly,” the French laboratory sent a sample to Germany, where cross-validation testing revealed that the sample matched perfectly with a male named GW1909m by scientists, registered in the German genetic database.
Fecal samples analyzed in 2020 by the German Senkerberg Research institute show that this wolf was born in the spring of 2020 in a pack settled near Nordhorn, a few kilometers from the border with the Netherlands.
The scientific collaboration between the three laboratories has made it possible to discover that this individual wolf traveled 1,240 kilometers between the place of its birth and the municipality of Vilaller, where it was last detected in February 2023, passing through France in May 2022. This is the longest journey that has been recorded between specimens of this species, since the documented straight line distances were 1,092 km, between Norway and Finland, and 880 km between Germany and Belarus.
The monitoring has been carried out using a molecular genetics technique. “The research has not been invasive at all, molecular genetics has allowed us to analyze the feces without the need to capture or submit to analysis the animal itself,” Sastre stressed.
A journey helped by the Great Lockdown
The study published by the UAB confirms that wolves have been spreading throughout Europe since the late 70s, thanks to a very strict legal protection system.
This regime has allowed mammals to spread to new areas, from the Italian Alps or central Europe to the plains of Germany or western Poland.
The species stands out for its physical ability to travel long distances and the flexibility of its behavior, which has allowed GW1909m to cross areas colonized by humans.
Along with the measures to protect the species, Sastre places the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Great Lockdown to try to reduce the expansion, at the time of this wolf's great journey: “My theory is that Covid-19 helped a lot to the dispersion of wild animals, since they are all enclosed they can move easily and the risk of them dying from being run over decreases,” he detailed.
The populations of Iberian, Italian and central wolves continue to live in isolation, apart from cases of dispersal such as that of this mammal.
Until now, there is no evidence that members of these three lineages have reproduced with each other, but the study scientists assure that traveling such long distances is important to connect distant wolf populations and prevent genetic isolation and inbreeding in the species.
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