Sivut

perjantai 21. syyskuuta 2018

Been a while..

Hey all. It's been a quite a while since I last time updated here. Reason for this was my own well-being, as work and actively following/engaging in the wolf issues exhausted me completely. Thus I took a complete off-grid approach on everything wolf related. Most likely I'm going to continue this way, since momentarily resurfacing still suck my energies dry even after almost a year of recuperation.

Reason for resurfacing in the world of wolf topics was that wolves did some damage just 6 kilometers away from my home. Thus to make sure I'm aware of their movements in my surrounding area (since I happen to own some sheep and a horse).

Some updates I'm gonna give to you now are the updated consensus figures, some legislative stuff and an interesting new behavior wolves here have been exhibiting.


First the estimate:

In March 2018 it was estimated that there were 165-190 wolves in Finland. This estimate was 10% larger than year before. In the estimate the packs that are shared with Russia are conted only by half of their strength. If these wolves are counted completely in to Finnish population the amount of wolves was 180-205 individuals.

The amount of packs that completely or mostly resided in Finland was 20. This is 30% larger than year before. The packs residing on both sides of the border was 5 strong, two packs drop from the previous year.
Territories inhabited by 2 wolves (pair) was 15 out of which 2 were living in the border area.
Also 3 territories were left open whether there were 2 or 3 wolves residing in the area.

The distribution of wolf packs differed significantly from previous year. The amount of wolves residing in the western wolf management zone rose from 47% to 68%. In this western management zone there were 16 likely dennings where as in the Eastern wolf management zone there were 9 likely dennings, the border pack included. the pack size was slightly larger in the west (5,1 indv.) than the east 4,4 indv.)

The known mortality between 1st of August 2017 and 31st of March 2018 was 25. Out of these there were 2 alphas, one male and one female (from different packs). Out of all there were 18 males and 7 females.
The cause of death were: 13 killed with damage based permits (1 alpha female), 5 were killed by traffic/collision, 3 were killed out of necessity (threatening behavior against humans etc.) 3 by order of the police and 1 unknown cause of death. (an alpha male).



On the legislative stuff.

-The cap of  wolves that can be hunted per year was not given this year since this kind of cap doesn't seem to have any kind of directioning effect since the permits given out are solely based on damages and thus the cap doesn't have any real function.

-The management plan is being revised and will be updated in the beginning of 2019.

-The legislation regarding damage compensations is being revised, since the funds are not enough to cover all large carnivore caused damages as it is. The largest part of the compensation money goes to the reindeer herders since most of the damages are done to reindeer and by wolverine. Also a goverment regulation called Lex Halla has given some reindeer herding areas larger compensations than others (up to three times as large a sum than the value of the lost animal). Thus Lex Halla is being ended and the compensation is redirected so that the dog owners shall get full compensation and is funds are running low the capping will be shared by the reindeer herding compensations instead of all recipients of the compensations.


And the behavioral quirk:

Wolves in the Southern Osthrobothnia have started to attack and kill animals in the fur farms. Whether this is a behavior of a single pack or couple of them is yet unclear to me. However to this day wolves have either directly killed, injured or stressed to death at least 9 silver foxes on 3 different farms.
I've never heard of such behavior before, although wolves are known to kill mesopredators in general.