Outdoor Perspectives

“Where is Latvia?” I bet many people would ask straight away. It’s a part of Europe, with Latvia being the middle of the Baltic States, between Estonia in the north and Lithuania in the south. It also borders Russia and Belarus. And it’s thanks to our eastern neighbours that there’s a strong wolf population in the Baltics in general, and Latvia in particular.

Latvia is rather a small country (64,500 sq. km in total) with a flat terrain (the highest point being 311m a.s.l.) and lots of forests (ca. 44% of the country’s area) and bogs (ca. 10%). Forests are of both boreal coniferous as well as mixed and deciduous type.

A brief squabble

They are inhabited by abundant wildlife - elk, red deer, wild boar, European beaver, hares etc. Wolf is not the only large carnivore here; it shares forests with a few hundred lynx and a bunch of brown bears.

Population fall and growth

The opposite to many other European countries, Latvia has always had wolves in its territory since the species appeared here after the last ice age. It should be noted, though, that in the 20th century wolves experienced a couple of numerica declines when active anti-wolf campaigns happened in the late 1930s and 1960s. Wolf numbers fluctuated widely from a few (17 wolves in 1940) to almost 1000 animals.

But because of the presence of a strong wolf population in the east, the Baltic population always recovered through natural re-colonisation. Since late 1970s, a gradual population increase has been observed and the number of wolves reached another post-war maximum of about 1000 individuals by mid-1990s.

It was followed by an intensive control programme, which reduced the number significantly, the present population being about 250-300 wolves. However, wolf is a very plastic species, which can recover very quickly as soon as the hunting pressure decreases.

Distribution and diet

Wolves are widespread in Latvia, being most common in western and eastern part of the country. They prey mainly on wild animals, and livestock depredation happens only occasionally - seasonally and/or locally.

Partly, it is not a big problem because livestock husbandry is not intensive in Latvia and large sheep flocks or cattle herds are rare. Since there are more than 100,000 beavers in the country, they feature a lot on the wolf menu, reaching more than 30% of their summer diet in some areas.

This is a good argument for wolf conservation when talking to foresters (who are often hunters, too). Beavers, once extinct and then re-introduced, are now so abundant that they damage industrial forests, and anything that can help reducing their numbers, even if it’s a wolf, is regarded by foresters as a blessing.

Hunting - right or wrong?

There is a strong lobby for wolf hunting in the country. Hunting traditionally is a very popular occupation, especially among rural inhabitants, although the total proportion of hunters is somewhat lower than in Scandinavia or Germany. And this is the main reason for conflicts between humans and wolves as both of them hunt the same prey - wild ungulates.

Often, however, it is forgotten that for wolves, wild ungulates are the primary and the only food resource. I do not want to start a discussion here on whether or not hunting is the right thing.

If we just accept it as a reality, then I’d risk stating that there is nothing wrong with hunting as such, as long as it is done within the sensible limits and according to established seasons and quotas. If ungulate hunting is generally accepted, then viable populations of predators can be harvested, too. There is a crucial difference whether a species is hunted according to a sustainable quota or as a pest, which should be exterminated.

A pest?

The latter case is the past, as the attitude towards large carnivores has been gradually changing in the last few decades. Latvua might be slightly behind this process, since until 1991, the country was a part of the USSR where the official policy was to get rid of wolves in most of their distribution range. As a result, a big proportion of hunters still regard wolves as their competitors for the same prey and try to reduce their numbers.

But times are changing and a sensible approach would be to regard wolves as just another valuable game species, which has its seasonal hunting ban and quotas. This will require lots of education work, as old traditions die hard. One way to educate hunters and change their attitude is to involve them into research on large predators and to inform about the results of this co-operation.

Involving hunters

For example, at the moment, hunters have to report all harvested wolves to the researchers who come and pick carcasses for further investigation. But first, hunters have a special questionnaire to fill out (measuring various body parameters of wolves), which makes them personally involved into the research process.

As scientists, we regularly publish articles in a nature and hunting magazine, informing the audience about the results, which are obtained during the ongoing studies with hunters participating. Also, when planning new projects involving telemetry, active involvement of hunters is crucial for the success of such projects. They can assist in capturing animals, and such activities can also help to change their attitude towards the species.

Legislation

The legislation was changed before Latvia joined the European Union in May 2004. The closed season was introduced (1 April to 15 July) and an annual hunting quota is set by the State Forest Service. Latvia still lacks data on the home range of wolf packs and their predation rates, which has important practical implications for the species management. These data can be obtained by means of radio-telemetry, for which funding was provided by the Norwegian Research Council as a part of an international project “Large carnivores in northern landscapes”. However, wolves are far less co-operative than lynx and the work to capture and radio-collar them is still ongoing.

Attitude - the key to conservation

It’s easy to say “Wolves won’t be hunted” or even get an appropriate law but it doesn’t help much if the attitude of people do not change. There are far too many examples (even within Europe) of how inefficient such artificially implied laws can be, causing poaching and latent mortality and the lack of information on the species status. Co-operation and an open discussion with all the parties involved are what is needed for successful species conservation.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 8th, 2006 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Zoology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.