Helping wolves in Bulgaria

Wolf Study and Conservation Program

Balkan Wildlife Society, Bulgaria
Progress report
July - September 2003

The summer of 2003 brought no holidays for the Wolf Study and Conservation Program team. Just the opposite, it was an extremely active summer. We spent a lot of our time raising Vucho our wolf puppy and built an enclosure for him; we continued our field work (tracking, trapping, etc.), did scat analysis, maintained contact with local people and interviewed them to monitor wolf activity toward livestock; and finally we helped to complete the base we are going to use in the Pirin mountains. This is actually the base area of another project run by the SEMPERVIVA Society, but we have agreed to use the accommodation for both projects.

Summary of the situation so far:

Vucho is doing well and showing very good behavior with people;

The enclosure was built, although it cost us a lot of worry and more money than we had estimated. The company making the fence was more than two weeks late producing it. Still, we managed to get most of it done and there are just a few details still needing attention.

The field work continued well except for the trapping activities, which were unsuccessful yet again - we still haven't caught a wolf! Even worse, another trap was stolen. We set three trap lines during the summer. First the rain played tricks with us and we had to pull one of the trap lines too early. On the third trap line two foxes were caught and we had to pull out those two traps. Then, a calf managed to close another trap when passing along the trail. With too few traps left on this trap line we decided to pull them all out. Additionally, the project car, which is far too old, was broken all the time and it was very difficult to continue working in the area, which is high up in the mountain.

We completed another phase of our scat analysis. All the wolf scats collected so far were analyzed. The results showed that the wolf diet in our two study areas is very diverse consisting of both wild prey and domestic animals. A significant percent of the natural prey is hare, roe deer and micro-mammalian species. The occurrence of untypical wolf prey, like martens and badgers was interesting. Of domestic animals, the remains of goats and sheep are most frequently found. The results show that wolves eat also domestic dogs, which are actually easy prey roaming free around villages.

An inquiry was conducted amongst livestock breeders in the new study area (Pirin Mountains.). The aim is to monitor wolf activity towards livestock and to measure the level of conflict between wolves and local people. Such monitoring is done annually in the area of Kraishte and it will be done in the same way in Pirin to collect comparative data.

The project base of SEMPERVIVA Society was completed with our help. Since the end of June it's been used by both teams. Actually, there is very good cooperation between the two projects. People from the other team helped us in the construction of the wolf enclosure.

In spite of all the difficulties and the huge amount of work we came up with some good results. Certainly, the work is going on …

Prepared by:
Elena Tsingarska - Sedefcheva
/project coordinator/
05. 10. 2003