Joint press release of AOPK ČR, NP České Švýcarsko and OWAD project
The knocked down wolf in Děčín actually had a mange
March 20, 2019 - In February, a knocked down wolf female was found near Ceska Kamenice. She was transported to the State Veterinary Institute in Prague because of suspicion of mange, where an autopsy was carried out in cooperation with scientists from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague.
The autopsy showed death from acute trauma due to a collision with a car and confirmed the disease of the scab (Sarcoptes scabiei L., 1758), rabies was excluded. Genetic analysis at the Faculty of Science of Charles University showed that the animal belonged to the Central European lowland population. In its stomach were found residues of consumed wild boar. This suggests that the female not long before death routinely hunted, and despite the infestation of mange, fed wildlife. “In Central European conditions, the mange is a common parasitic disease (occurring in up to 10-20% of foxes), which is also transmissible to other animal species, including humans. It does not necessarily mean the death of infected animals, they often get out of it themselves, ”explains Aleš Vorel from the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of the Environment, who is engaged in wolf research in the region as part of the OWAD project [1]. "Mange also appeared in some wolves in neighbouring Saxony. The wolves that manifested this disease showed no change in behaviour towards humans, ”Vorel said.
“At the autopsy, no RFID chip was found. This does not confirm the numerous unsubstantiated speculations about the release of wolves in the Czech Republic into the wild. The level of claw abrasion also shows that she lived in the wild, ” adds Aleš Vorel. The weight (28 kg) and measures of the wolf corresponded to the adult after a long winter. Her nutritional status was good. The autopsy also showed that the female was most likely reproducing in 2018. According to the characteristic areas without hair on her body, it was possible to identify the female in the photographs from the camera traps taken in the Lusatian Mountains and the National Park České Švýcarsko (Bohemian Switzerland). Disease development can be traced from December 2018 to February this year.
"In the České Švýcarsko National Park and its immediate surroundings, the presence of wolves has been reliably proven since 2016, and as other pictures from the camera traps show, they are quite common in the local forests," says Tomáš Salov, spokesman of the České Švýcarsko NP, and adds: "Yet we have only very sporadic reports about at least a fabled direct sight of a wolf by humans. However, collisions with human interests occasionally occur when wolves overcome protection system of herds, so we urge breeders not to underestimate this aspect and correctly secure their herds [2,3 ] "
“Transportation is one of the essential factors that limit the movement of large mammals through our landscape. The knocked down female wolf in the NP České Švýcarsko is not the first case, last year a dead wolf was found on the D10 motorway near Mladá Boleslav, a year earlier on the D1 motorway near Havličkův Brod. But not only wolves die on the roads, but also many other animal species, ”says Karolína Šůlová of the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic.
Comment:
[1] Objective Wolves Acceptance in human-altered cross boundary lanDscapes (OWAD) project was supported by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under the 2014-2020 Czech Republic - Free State of Saxony Cross-Border Cooperation Program. The principal investigator is the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU), in addition to scientists from the Faculty of Environmental Sciences of the CZU, there is at the Czech side of the project the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic (MoE), and the Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, that leads the work with the public - manages, for example, the website www.navratvlku.cz, which provides up-to-date information on wolves, preventive measures to protect herds and support options for breeders. On behalf of the German side, the project partner is Senckenberg Natural Science Society, represented by the Museum for Natural History in Görlitz (Museum Görlitz).
[2] For information about herd protection and support options see https://www.navratvlku.cz/prevence-proc-prevence/
Contact:
Aleš Vorel, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, e-mail: vorel@fzp.czu.cz, phone: 605281401
Karolína Šůlová, Nature Conservation Agency of the Czech Republic, e-mail: karolina.sulova@nature.cz, phone: 724102406
Tomas Salov, National Park České Švýcarsko, e-mail: t.salov@npcs.cz, phone: 737276865