More wolf tales

The Danish authorities have released a map showing the various sightings of wolves in Denmark since the official rediscovery of the animal last winter. The official estimate is between two and five wolves. This is all well and good, but of course the deer-hunting season has also just started in Denmark, so everybody is waiting and dreading the time when some trigger-happy hunter who's been reading the Brothers Grimm to many times, starts blasting away at the wolves. Unfortunately several of them have already bragged about planning to do just that if the wolf got in their cross-hairs - just to protect their children and life-stock of course. Rumours have already started about wolves already having been shot - morons!!!

Beetle rediscovered in Denmark after 45 years

Danish naturalist Klaus Bek Nielsen had an inkling something major was afoot, when a rather dapper beetle suddenly trundled across an area of good ant-lion territory on the danish island Møn. He had been out exploring with a friend for most of the day, when this beetle suddenly appeared. Closer inspection and confirmation by several experts revealed it to be a specimen of Chrysolina carnifex - as seen on this very nice photo taken by Klaus Bek Nielsen.



This is the first confirmed sighting of the beetle in Denmark since 1967. Bek Nielsen and his friend is probably the only living naturalist in Denmark to have seen this beetle. All earlier sightings were made by people who are now all dead.

Wolf hunters and other morons

Wolves have been a big issue in Denmark for several months now – for the first time in 200 years we now have wolves living in our little country – two of them to be exact. But unfortunately all the loonies have started to come out of the woodwork as well. Some people seem to have their knowledge of wolves from the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and we have been subjected to all kinds of paranoid and hysterical ramblings from people who are now too frightened to take a walk in their local wood, from politicians who are certain the wolves have been released by biologists as part of some kind of underhanded scheme to suppress people living in rural areas. An organization has even started to collect signatures to get the government to sanction killing the wolves.

The latest is “anonymous” hunters declaring that when the deer hunting season starts in a couple of weeks, the wolves will not be a problem, as they will shoot them on sight. They are even bragging about two wolves that have allegedly already been shot and buried quietly. Unfortunately stupidity is not illegal in this country, but they even have the audacity to say that the wolves have been shot as an act of compassion – this is based on a photo of one of the wolves taken by an automatic camera a few weeks ago showing a wolf shedding its winter coat. “This wolf is clearly severely debilitated by mange, so we are in fact doing it a favour by shooting it.”

This one is only sleeping in the sun by the way.

Oh yes – and of course there is also an element of “them and us”. Them being people like me living in the capital, and not knowing a thing about nature, unlike a certain group of farmers and other people living in rural areas who see themselves as the only people who truly understand what’s going on in nature, and who see themselves as living in pact with nature and the seasons. “How do you think it would be to live beside a ferocious predator like a wolf? some of them have shouted at me – you can of course if you like, exchange ferocious with bloodthirsty or something even more scary. I have even been told that if my child was eaten by a wolf I would be sorry that I hadn’t listened to those sane voices wanting the wolves to be killed as quickly as possible.

And to think I had this idea that the Middle Ages was long gone. Silly me!

The wild and wanton wallaby

We have an important cryptozoological anniversary on our hands here in Denmark today. A red-necked wallaby have now been on the loose for a year since it ran away from its owner, a farmer on the Danish island Ærø in the spring of 2012. Despite the winter and spring 2012/2013 being very cold and nasty, the animal is probably having the time of its life. It is regularly seen by locals, and it has been moving around all over the island. The owner, who is something of a wallaby afficionado (he's got 15 all together) has been trying to catch the animal on and off for most of the year, but is is proving difficult, and since it is doing so well, he isn't trying to hard. Locals are even now trying to persuade him to release some more, and make them into a tourist attraction.

Rampant marsupials are nothing new in Denmark. This wallby is not the first, and will probably not be the last. Most of the sightings during the years (and they stretch back about a century) are of red-necked wallabies. They are a tough and very adaptable species having no problems with the danish climate. One set of sightings though, from the early 1960's are a wee bit different. That particular kangaroo was described as being very big - close to 2 meters, and bright red. Giant red kangaroo anyone? This was in the southern parts of the island Zealand, about 50 km's southwest of the danish capital of Copenhagen. It was seen 7 times all together, and then disappeared without a trace.

It was a wolf!

Ever since the alleged wolf was found dead in northwestern Denmark on November 16th., speculation has been rife as to the actual identity of the animal, and the actual cause of death. The Danish Veterinary Institute has now published their findings and conclusions.

First of all - the animal was not shot or poisoned or anything sinister. The poor thing was suffering from some form of tumour in the chest cavity - not cancerous, but caused by some form of inflammation. The tumour ended up being so large the animal couldn't eat, and finally wasn't able to breath.Not an easy death by any means.

There was of course morons celebrating that the "monster" was dead, but the general feeling was one of sadness. A lot of people would have liked to have free-roaming wolves in Denmark. But not this time.

And then there was the matter of identity - wolf, wolf-dog hybrid, wolflike dogbreed or something else?? The first detailed anatomical examination of the dead animal could not give a definitive answer. Some dog breeds are extremely wolf-like, or a wolf is very doglike so to speak, so we all had to wait for a DNA analysis.

It was indeed a bonafide wolf. According to the genetic analysis it must have come from the German population, so it had been on quite a walkabout before it ended up in northern Denmark. Nobody knows for how long it has been here, but probably for at least a year. I have a sighting from the border area with Germany from early 2011 from a girl of 16 who thought she saw a wolf running across the road early one morning when she was on her bycicle driving to school. This could have been the first entry of the wolf into Denmark.

Anyway - what is certain is that the now dead wolf represents the first confirmed wolf-sighting in Denmark in 199 years! Not bad. I wonder what comes next?

Alas poor wolf - an update

The possible wolf that showed up in Denmark recently - and in my last post - elicited the kind of reactions you would expect. A lot of people were over the moon about it, talking about how fantastic it would be to have this large predator back in Denmark. And of course the panic mongers started coming out of the woodwork, screaming about what all those treehugging greenie f****** hippies would say when the wolf attacked their child - which it would certainly do, because we know from scientific sources (Little Red Riding Hood and so forth) that wolves are bloodthirsty killers...bla, bla, bla.And could we please send a lot of hunters and policemen out there and kill it as quickly as possible.

Fortunately not everybody lost their head in such an obvious manner. The environmental authorities mounted a whole string of automatic cameras all over the area and supplied the animal with plenty of bait - dead deer and various other juicy pieces of meat - and then sat back and waited. It almost ended in a major stampede, as some started to offer rewards for a definite picture of the animal. Luckily the reward offer was withdrawn before people started galloping all over the restricted area where the "wolf" was seen

Alas poor wolf - the story did not have a happy ending. As can be seen from this link:

http://jyllands-posten.dk/indland/article4913999.ece

the animal was found dead a couple of days ago. Everybody feared it had been shot by some vigilante type or poisoned, but it seems the poor animal died from starvation inspite of the large number of camerabaits. It is now going to be dissected to determine the exact course of death, and a DNA-test will be performed to see whether it was in fact a wolf, and if so from what population.

Stay tuned for further developments.

The first wolf in Denmark in 200 years?

Strange things are a foot in northern Denmark. On October 14th, a group of birdwatchers in Thy National Park in northern Denmark saw and photographed what they believed were a wolf. One of the admittedly not very good pictures can be seen here: http://www.fugleognatur.dk/gallery.asp?mode=ShowLarge&ID=197198 The animal was seen rather late in the day and at a fair distance, but for almost half an hour. It is a rather exciting find, if it is indeed a wolf, as the closest confirmed wolf sighting was a young animal in northern Germany about 100 km south of the danish-german border a couple of years ago. And that's some 500 km south of Thy National Park. There has been sightings of a wolf-like animal in the area for the last couple of years, 4 sightings that I know of at least, but this is the first time anyone has taken a photograph. There has also been sightings in the area around Silkeborg, a densely wooded area filled with lakes about 200 km further south. These sightings have been going on for many years. I have documented a lot of these, including a couple of cases where people have heard wolves (yes - plural) howling.

I have also collected a few sightings in the area just around the border with Germany, so the possibility of a wolf in Denmark is not that remote. As of now everybody, self included is waiting for more people with big lenses to get out there and take some better pictures. But unfortunately we are also waiting for the inevitable panic reactions, people demanding that the animal be shot or farmers claiming that a lone wolf have killed 200 of their cows or sheep or whatever, and that there children are in grave danger the moment they step out the door. Reactions like this almost makes you wish it is in fact just a stray dog, but it looks rather convincing to me. Stay tuned for further developments.