Panorama

Fierce, evil and bloodthirsty. It is this negative image that led to merciless hunting until the last known wolf living in the wild was finally killed in 1904. Since 1990 they have been under official protection and in 2000 the first wolf pups for nearly a century were born in Lausatia, a region on the border with Poland.

It’s the first sunny winter day after weeks of icy grey weather. Five visitors have signed up for an excursion tracking wolves in the Lausatia region near the frontier with Poland. The reason we are here is because nature guide and wolf warden Stephan Kaasche recently held an informational speech about these mysterious creatures and piqued everyone’s curiosity. Will we see one of the wolves from the six packs that have been confirmed living in the area? “It’s pretty unlikely, actually. They stay well away from humans,” says Kaasche. He’s only seen three of the animals himself at this point. Once the most populous predator in the world, wolves have been more or less extinct in northern and central Germany since the end of the 19th century. Ten years ago a male and female pair made its way from Poland to Germany and gave birth to their first pups soon after arriving. Their numbers have now grown to an estimated 50 animals.

Wolf wanderings

Our group is on the move. Kaasche’s office is in the open-air museum village of Erlichthof in Rietschen, just at the edge of the Muskau Heath on the border with Poland. The heath is home to the so-called Nochten Pack, which has lived here since 2005. Over the last year, eight new pups were born, two of which were unfortunately run over by automobiles. Two of the younger animals from the pack were given transmitters that help track the movements and growth of the entire wolf population in Germany. “Carl”, one of the males, returned to his territory after a bit of roaming in Brandenburg, and his brother “Alan” is even more energetic in his wanderings, having made it all the way to Lithuania once. Unfortunately, in the middle of December of 2009, the GPS signal disappeared.

There are also no signs of Carl or his siblings anywhere in the deep snow on our walk, but there are plenty of signs of a healthy deer population. Stephan Kaasche points at the tracks: a stag, a doe, another doe, a dog – but no wolves. Do they raid villages and take small lambs if they can? “Not at all, in the cold and snowy winter there are plenty of weak or wounded game animals to prey on,” Kaasche answers, “and they don’t even have to work that hard at it.” In 2008, Saxony registered 56 dead sheep. In 2009 that number had dropped more than half to 21 despite the fact that the wolf population had remained constant. Local sheep farmers like Neumann were prepared for it and protected their herds, but he remains realistic even after losing a few animals, saying that, “If you are ready for wolves, then you can live with them.”

Slide Show: “Wolves in Germany”

Howling for a partner

The excursion has now taken us into the woods and everyone is looking at the ground – no signs of wolves yet. Wait, a bloodstain in the snow. Is a wolf... Kaasche takes a studied look at the spot but determines that it is probably just a sick animal. Disappointment spreads among the guests. Then he pulls a couple of boxes out of his pack with matted grey pellets inside. “These are droppings, wolf excrement,” he explains. “You can see exactly what he ate. Here, for example, is a piece of spinal bone.” Because the scat is like a genetic fingerprint, it is possible to make conclusions about the relationships between the different wolves in the pack. They were able to establish, for example, that one daughter from the Neustadt Pack in Saxony has settled in Brandenburg with her new partner.

The group passes Rietschen Pond. Is that howling we hear? No, that’s nothing, but February does mark the beginning of the mating season, which is accompanied by long, sustained sessions of howling. “In 2004, one of the Neustadt wolf females even fancied a domestic dog from the farm and howled night after night for him,” recalls Kaasche. If he had answered her pleas, the two could have definitely created a family and raised pups. Wolves and dogs are still very similar. It is only 16,000 years or so that the wolf was tamed and made into man’s best friend. Given the transformations among many of the nearly 400 races of dog now in existence, however, it is hard to believe that there is any wolf left in them at all.

A management plan

A crackling sound comes from the dark undergrowth, and there it is again: the primeval fear of the big bad wolf. “Unlike countries where they never fully disappeared, people here are no longer used to living with wolves and the associated conflicts that they represent,” reads the management plan for wolves in Saxony from 2009. The overall concept is to promote an environment where both humans and wolves can live happily together. In the end, whether the wolves survive or not is very much dependent on a positive attitude among humans.

At the end everyone makes it back to the office in one piece, and it was a very interesting tour that provided us all with new impressions and insights…even if the trail we were following was lost in the snow.