Helping wolves in Bulgaria

Wolf Study and Conservation Program

Balkan Wildlife Society, Bulgaria
Progress report
October - December 2004

The rainy weather started in October and we used it for some tracking in the Pirin Mountains. Although a complete picture of wolf movements can't be collected by tracking in mud, it was useful to do it, because we never know what kind of winter we'll get (if there will be enough snow). Last winter we noticed that snow cover stays for a very short time in the lower parts of west Pirin, where our second study area is. This is bad for our field work, because wolves stay exactly in the low mountain parts in winter, where ungulates come too and where all the livestock is taken for grazing all winter.

So, in October and November we did some "muddy" tracking and managed to follow some short trails and to collect a lot of scats for wolf diet analysis.

At the end of November we received information about four wolves killed in a town, very close to our Pirin study area. We went there and saw that unfortunately it was true. They had managed to kill a big part of a pack. The wolves were killed in a mountain neighboring Pirin, on the border with Macedonia. We managed to take all the four animals for analysis. After a detailed look we found out that all the animals were young. It was the usual picture. Almost always hunters manage to kill young individuals which are still not so careful as the adults. Three of them were puppies (born in 2004), two males and one female. The fourth one (a female) was two years old. We took all possible measurements and buried the wolves. We hoped that at least the breeding couple was still together and that they will manage to produce pups next spring.

With the intention of starting our trapping effort again, we ordered trap transmitters. We decided to use transmitters for two reasons. The first and the most important is that we will not need to walk on the trap line and leave our smell and like this will have better chances for catching wolves. The second reason is that being able to check the trap line from a distance will save us some time, which we would otherwise spend reaching the traps every morning. We hope that the transmitters will be ready soon and that we will be able to set some traps in the National Park, before the snow comes. Because of the hunting season (1st October - 31st December) we could not set any traps out of the National Park. There were hunters and hunting dogs everywhere. Unfortunately, the company which agreed to make the transmitters had some difficulties and the first transmitters did not work in the way we needed them to. Then they had to find a way to make them work better, and finally, a few days ago (in the beginning of January), they called me to say that the transmitters were ready. I really hope now they will work properly.

We already have a GIS model of the Pirin Mountains study area ready and now we are able to work out all the collected data using this program. This will give us very good chances of getting interesting and much needed results and making a prognosis from the data. Now we plan to order to the GIS specialists to make a GIS model for Kraishte study area. We got the financing for GIS for both areas from the Bernd Thies Foundation.


Prepared by:
Elena Tsingarska - Sedefcheva
10.01.2005