October 2003 - Wolves in Bulgaria today

In the Pirin Mountains, just above the village of Vlahi, there is beautiful little rocky place with some oak trees dotted around it. This place is special to us because it is the place where we are going to build an enclosure for our own socialised wolf who we have named "Vucho". He is still only fifty days old, but when he grows up, he will be the one who is going to show children and other people that he and the others of his kind are not fearful beasts, but creatures you can coexist with. He will be helping us, the people from BALKANI Wildlife Society, who work on the Wolf Study and Conservation Program in Bulgaria to broadcast this message to the public.

Next to the enclosure, we are planning to build our own Large Carnivore Information Center. Its purpose will be to introduce groups of schoolchildren, tourists and other people to the world of the wolf. Through interactive materials, slide and video presentations and practical work for pupils, visitors will learn the facts about wolf biology and ecology and about the important role of this predator species in nature.

Why is this education centre is so important?

The wolf is still very much a negative hero in Bulgaria - as in many other countries - and people know little about it. In parts of the world where it has been exterminated, people have realized the magnitude of their mistake and now are trying to get the species back - and yet here, we still fight with it - but why! It is going to take a lot of efforts to save the wolf before we too loose it.

At the end of the 1960's, the wolf population in this country was brought to the edge of extinction. No more than 150 - 200 wolves were left hiding in Bulgarian forests and it was mainly the very rough and difficult terrain in some of our mountains saved the wolf here. Fortunately, step by step the species started to recover and for thirty years it repopulated all the mountainous areas of the country. Now the official opinion is that we have not only a stable wolf population, but we have too many wolves. According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, 2000 wolves were counted in the whole country in 2002, while the same source showed about 500 wolves at the beginning of the 1990s.

What is the general situation in the Bulgarian forests?

After the political changes in 1989, controls on the use of forests and wildlife were weakened. Poaching became widespread and heavy and the numbers of some ungulate species like roe deer and red deer decreased sharply. In 1989, 140,000 roe deer were counted but only 40,000 were counted in 2002. The same serious, negative trends are also observed with the red deer population, but a survey made by the BALKANI Wildlife Society in 1997 shows that the wolf's main natural prey species in this country is the roe deer. So, how then has the wolf population managed to increase its numbers so fast at the same time that the roe deer population has declined so radically ?

Some would inevitably say "..yes, but in Bulgaria there is a whole lot of livestock which is also potential wolf prey", and I have to admit that the answer to this piece of speculation is both yes and no - read on.

Before the socialists took power in Bulgaria, this country was actually one of the most developed countries in the field of livestock breeding and agriculture. In some villages where flocks nowadays number only 200-300 animals, they would have numbered as much as 20,000 in the pre-socialist days. The socialist regime however, did not allow private ownership and livestock was confiscated with the majority of it finishing up on state owned farms. Despite this upheaval, the new arrangement still left Bulgaria with a goodly number of sheep, goats and cattle, which were grazed in the mountains. On the other hand, the latest round of political changes in 1989 has left farming in Bulgaria in a major crisis.

Some of the state-owned livestock was given back to the public but many of the potential recipients did not want to take it anymore because their families had moved to towns and cities searching for jobs. Thereafter, huge numbers of livestock were slaughtered when the state farms closed. A few optimistic people did decide to try and develop livestock breeding and to build up businesses but the conditions in Bulgaria by then were very bad indeed. The prices of agricultural products are now so low that the income from them hardly covers the expenses of the farmers keeping the animals.

The consequence of all this is big trucks, full with sheep, calves and even horses crossing the Bulgarian border every day, going to countries like Greece or Italy for meat. If we make a comparison between the livestock numbers in Bulgaria in the past and nowadays, we can say quite simply that almost nothing is left.

What then is it that wolves find to eat in Bulgaria and how can they survive and even grow so much in numbers?

We know that this highly adaptable species will always find ways to survive and the analysis of wolf diet in our study area, Kraishte, proves this. From 32 wolf scats analyzed, we only found remains of natural wolf prey (roe deer, wild boar, hare and some rodents) in 18. In 4 scats, we found remains of fam. Mustelidae representatives (badger, stone marten, weasel) - which is untypical wolf prey - and 21 scats yielded domestic animals remains (sheep, goats, dogs, cattle, horses, etc.). So, this answers the first question: Wolves can survive by eating whatever they find.

The second question has no such answer. There is no means by which the species can expand its numbers so fast in the face of such a shortage of natural food and livestock. The answer to this puzzle is simply that the population has not grown to the levels reported by the government. The count of wolves in the Kraishte study area made by our team in mid January 2003, proved that the officially given population figure for wolves is overestimated.

The lack of a natural diet is not the only problem the wolves face in this country. Our team already has three pieces of evidence that something is wrong with the genetic purity of the species here; We know of three animals with untypical colouration which have been killed in our mountains. We have not been able to afford a DNA analysis of these animals yet but we are searching for ways to get one done. If we can prove that there is hybridization between wild wolves and domestic dogs then we will have proved that the species is not doing as well here as the official opinion says it is and this will mean that the government will be obliged to launch conservation measures and activities.

At the moment the government can freely indulge in anti-wolf activities, supported by its unreal official data and the common negative attitude. Typical of this was the adoption, in May, of a proposal by the Hunting Council under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests to increase the bounty on wolves from 25 leva (13 Euros) to 100 leva (50 Euros). This is a serious incentive for hunters, because the average monthly salary in Bulgaria is only 200 leva (100 Euros). The excuse for this decision was: "Wolf numbers are too high, they are harming the ungulate populations and we have to control and decrease the wolf population."

The biggest problem is that there is no alternative, more realistic data about wolf numbers here, or about the real status of the wolf population and the impact this predator is having on its prey species - mainly (ideally) wild ungulates. This was one of the main factors which convinced us that we had to initiate the Wolf Study and Conservation Program in 1997 and to start intensively collecting data about wolf status and population trends in the country. But to collect enough data and to achieve a result much hard and long work is needed. So, the work goes on…

In parallel with our regular work all these years, we have been trying to lobby for improvement of the legal status of the wolf in Bulgaria. Our government ratified the Bern Convention in 1991, but excluded the wolf, the brown bear and the wild cat from the list of protected species. So, the wolf is still being hunted all year round.

In 2001, the Bulgarian Parliament finally adopted the "Law for Biodiversity Conservation". We were actively involved in its preparation and submitted statements and proposals. Under this law, a small improvement has been made to the legal status of the wolf. It was lumped together under a single heading with species for which hunting is regulated. I.e. if it is proven that in some period or in some region of the country the wolf population is not doing well (low number, unhealthy population, etc.), then the government is obliged to undertake conservation measures.

In the light of this law, our task here is to discover the real status of wolves in our country and to accumulate proof of it. We already have the legal base to press for a better policy towards the species once we have that proof. To do the work which accumulating such proof requires, we need to attract more co-workers and members. We are sure that our wolf puppy, Vucho will help us to do this.


Elena Tsingarska - Sedefcheva

BALKANI Wildlife Society
/Coordinator of the Wolf Study and Conservation Program/