Helping wolves in Bulgaria

Wolf Study and Conservation Program

Balkan Wildlife Society, Bulgaria
Progress report
April - June 2005

In April our work we devoted our time to radio-tracking our first radio-collared wolf. We had decided that as soon as we caught a wolf we would do our best to track the animal every day, because in Bulgaria you never known when hunters will manage to shoot it. Well, we couldn’t actually track our wolf every day, but we tracked it every second or third day and in the process we found that this wolf actually inhabits quite a small area. Tracked from the end of March to 9^th of May he spent the whole time in an area of about 20 sq. km.

The last time we radio-located him and he was active was 6^th of May. On 8^th of May when we went out to track him, we received a “mortality” signal (Ed. a different kind of signal that the collar emits when the animal has not moved for a certain number of hours). On the next day following the mortality signal we found him dead in a pine forest within the area he usually inhabited while we were tracking him. He did not have any injuries and we couldn’t see any reason for his death. We took the stomach for analysis and buried him. When we open the stomach we found out that it was completely empty. Only one oak leaf and few pine needles. He possibly could not hunt, but we could not find why he couldn’t do so.

So, our first radio-collared wolf carried his collar for a only short time, but still we are thankful for the data we collected about him. The area he inhabited was a small part at the edge of the home-range of a wolf pack we have been following for 2,5 years now. We presume that this old male we were tracking had been replaced by a younger animal and stayed in the periphery of the pack territory living alone. We couldn’t combine our radio-tracking with snow tracking because of the season, but the fact that the wolf spent all the period from catching him to his death (1,5 month) in that small area, shows that most probably he was living alone at that period.

But as people say: “Some die, others are born”. Since 5^th of June we have another wolf puppy, a female. She was born on 21^st of May and we managed to take her when she was two weeks old. The main purpose for taking her was to become Vucho’s friend and company. The other, not less important purpose is to make her become another ambassador wolf for the education of the public. She is now a small cute creature, only 50 days old. We took her from another Bulgarian zoo, from the town of Stara Zagora.

Our two wolves are becoming popular characters now. They teach people about their species - not only our own Bulgarian public, but also the foreigners. In May we had a French film team with us. They made a documentary about Karakachan dogs and wolves in Bulgaria and Vucho was one of the main actors in it. In July we had a German team making a documentary about Bulgarian biodiversity and again Vucho is one of the starts.

The summer field work continues in spite of the bad luck we had with our wolf. Since mid June we have started a survey of wild ungulates density in the study areas. The purpose is to define the abundance of the natural prey for the wolf. We need this data to complete the conclusions on wolf diet in the two study areas, but we also need it to find out the real numbers and density of ungulates because the official figures are not reliable enough. This study is going to be done until the end of July in the Pirin Mountains. Another important part of our schedule is the simulated howling we do in July and the beginning of August. Last year we found the area of a den site through this method. This year we still haven’t had a response but we hope we will get some data before the end of the survey in August.