#swedish wolf

[lippaloppa]

One of my most recent artworks, quite proud. Gonna be part of an exhibition in Gothenburg at a gallery called KC West. Seriously considering turning it into a print.

[pleathersblog]

Save The Swedish Wolves

[skulkingfox]

Illegal poaching accounts for over half of all deaths of Swedish wolves, suggests a new study. Basing their estimates on long-term wolf counts, the researchers reveal that two-thirds of poaching goes undetected.

The study suggests that without the past decade of persecution Swedish wolves would be four times more abundant than they are today.

"Many have speculated that poaching levels are high for many threatened species of carnivores," said Chris Carbone from the Zoological Society of London.

"This study presents an important step in trying to quantify this hidden threat," he added.

The new study predicts the size of the wolf Swedish population each year based on counts from the previous year.

These counts are based on radio-tracked wolves and the more traditional 'footprint count', used in Sweden for over 10 years to estimate wolf numbers. The researchers' estimates took account of confirmed cases of wolf mortality - such as when a wolf is killed on the road, dies from disease or is found killed.

However, when the team, based at Grimso Wildlife Research Station in Sweden, compared the expected numbers produced by their models to the actual number of wolves in the wild, they found they were over estimating the size of the population.

Conservation biologist Guillaume Chapron, and one of the team, suspects that 'cryptic poaching', poaching that goes undetected, accounts for this difference. The poaching we see is the "tip of the iceberg," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14533400